Journeys
by NightSpear
Summary: AU, sequel to "Archaeology." The assassination attempt at the Goa'uld summit fails; the Tok'ra base at Revanna is attacked. Someone has to use the symbiote poison on Zipacna's army for SG-1 to escape. Daniel volunteers. Explicit spoilers up to season 8.
1. Part I: Endings

Title: Journeys  
Rating: PG-13  
Disclaimer: Nothing you recognize is mine. I gain nothing of material value from this.  
Pairings: Gen (mild insinuations of established canon pairings)

Summary: AU; sequel to _Archaeology_. The assassination attempt at the Goa'uld summit fails, and the Tok'ra base at Revanna is attacked. Someone has to use the symbiote poison on Zipacna's army for SG-1 to escape. Daniel volunteers. Explicit spoilers up to season 8.

Warnings: Character death(s); depiction of violence; mild language

Notes: Even more than the first four novels in the AU series, knowledge of the events in canon will be very helpful in reading this. Mostly, this means seasons 5-7 (and a bit of early season 8). Anything related to the Ascension/Ancients arc(s), including seasons 8-10 and _Ark of Truth_, may be referenced or hinted at (and spoiled), as well.

Also, because several hundred thousands of words have passed since I first started planning this installment, a bullet-point summary of the previous four AU novels, with emphasis on events and facts that are different from canon and are important setup for this one, can be found on my livejournal. If you'd like a quick refresher, please click on the link to my homepage in my profile; then choose the tag "journeys" and scroll to the first (bottom) entry.

Here we go! Please read and review.

**XXXXX**  
**Part I: Endings**  
**XXXXX**

**26 November 2001; Ra's Pyramid, Abydos; 0100 hrs**

_Jack stepped through the wormhole first, even though he didn't want to leave the bedside. It was important to check security; Daniel wouldn't even know right now whether or not someone was sitting with him._

_Skaara was waiting, as usual. He grinned, as usual, and lowered his gun and said, "O'Neill," and looked torn between a salute or an embrace for a greeting, as usual._

_Instead of answering as usual, Jack said, "Where's your dad? Where's Kasuf?"_

_"In the village," Skaara said, the smile starting to droop, as if he was starting to see that all was not well. He turned around and nodded to one of the younger boys, who ran off into the desert. "What has happened?"_

_"Daniel was hurt," Jack said, aware of the wormhole still behind him and aware that he hadn't moved a step since walking through--he was still standing at the bottom of the platform where the Stargate sat, and all the boys in the pyramid had lowered their weapons, stopped what they were doing, looked up to listen to him. "It's...bad."_

_"Then tell them to close the _chaapa'ai_," Skaara said, stepping toward the DHD. "I want to see him--"_

_"No," Jack said. "He's coming here."_

_With one hand already poised over the glyph of Auriga, Skaara froze but kept staring at the DHD. Jack knew the look on his face, though. He knew. "No," he denied. "If Dan'yel is hurt, he should remain on Earth. Your physicians can care for him--"_

_"No, Skaara," Jack said. "They can't."_

_Leaning on the DHD now, Skaara said, "Why?"_

_Jack clenched his fists and forced himself to relax them again. "They tried. He was hurt too badly. He's...near the end."_

_Finally, Skaara looked up. "How?"_

_"It's a long story," Jack said. "Not really important right n--"_

_Skaara covered the distance between them in one stride, grabbed Jack by the vest, and pushed him against the wall of the pyramid. He didn't have the leverage or the weight for their position, not really, but he was making a point, not a threat, and Jack didn't move. "You cannot tell me my brother is dying and not tell me who killed him," he hissed. "Tell me what happened!"_

_"All right," Jack said. "But first I have to tell them it's safe to bring Daniel through. He wants to be here when he...dies. And he doesn't have much time left."_

XXXXX

**_Five Days Ago  
Briefing Room, SGC; 1400 hrs_**

"We do not have much time," Ren'al told them.

"You can give us a minute to think about it," Jack snapped back. Daniel gave him a reproachful look but didn't argue aloud.

Ren'al stood. "Come to Revanna tomorrow if you plan to take this mission."

"If I do this," Daniel said, still playing with his pen, "and it works...then all the System Lords...?"

"Yes," Ren'al said. "They can all be killed with one blow. It will be the greatest strike against the Goa'uld in ten thousand years. It will be the end of all we have been fighting for."

Jack huffed in annoyance. "Don't hold back the melodrama on our account," he muttered.

"Councilor," Hammond said firmly, standing up. "Thank you. We'll have an answer for you by tomorrow. I'll have them send you back to Revanna in the meantime."

Once both of them had stepped into the control room, though, Carter said quietly, "Colonel, I think she's right about the stakes."

"All the System Lords," Daniel said for the second time.

"You don't have to do it," Jack said.

In answer, Daniel repeated, "All the System Lords, Jack."

"Yeah," Jack said, "which makes it a bad place for you to be alone, Daniel."

"You've sent me into more dangerous situations yourself," Daniel pointed out, and then, "Don't look at me like that. It's not an accusation; it's just a fact."

Jack glanced at Teal'c. Teal'c was being silent and unhelpful. "You're not an assassin," Jack said.

"_Assassin_," Daniel said, slowly, in the wrong accent, mulling over the word's origins the way he sometimes did when he was nervous and decided to drown nerves with intellect. "You know, half of it is the word choice--'assassinate' sounds more sinister than 'kill,' and 'defense of our people' sounds better when you ignore the fact that you assassinated people to do it."

"This is not a game of words, Daniel Jackson," Teal'c said.

"I know," Daniel said, still oddly calm. "I've killed. We're all assassins sometimes. As often as we can be, in fact, which isn't as often as we'd like but is more often than we'd like to admit. This is what you've been training me to do for the last five years."

"No, it's not," Jack denied immediately.

Daniel gave him a look. "I came here to fight the Goa'uld. We all know it was coming to something like this--that the only way to beat them is to kill them."

"But if someone else can do it," Carter said. "If any of us could find a way to do it instead..."

"I know, Sam," Daniel said. "But you can't."

It wasn't even a question of whether Daniel could pull it off. Jack was sure he could--or, at least, as sure as he ever was, and Daniel was right that they'd all walked into situations like this before. In fact, Daniel's youth had often given him an advantage when they had to infiltrate enemy territory, so he had as much experience as anyone being undercover off-world. The Tok'ra were serious about this--they would make sure things went off without a hitch.

Because this could win the war for them.

All things considered, this was _exactly_ what they'd been training Daniel for. But Daniel had never taken a mission quite like this one. He thought this killing spree would be the same as any other time when they crouched behind flimsy cover and exchanged fire with enemy soldiers or set a bomb to detonate and barely escaped with their lives. Maybe it_ was_ the same, on some level, but Jack knew well that it wouldn't _feel_ the same, and that mattered.

General Hammond returned once the wormhole had closed behind Ren'al. He took his seat and remained silent until it was clear no one else was going to say anything. "I'm not going to order you to accept the Tok'ra's mission," he said. "The choice is yours, Mr. Jackson."

Daniel looked up, surprised. "Mine?"

"Yours," Hammond said. "Not mine, not Colonel O'Neill's. If you say 'yes,' you'll be the one carrying this out. You're the only human here fluent in Goa'uld--or am I wrong about that?"

"No, sir, that's...no one else is fluent enough to enter a Goa'uld summit as _lo'taur_," Daniel said. "Rather, the ones who are relatively fluent don't have field experience."

"Wait, enter as what?" Jack said.

"_Lo'taur_ is the highest rank among human slaves," Teal'c translated. "Each of the System Lords will undoubtedly choose his _lo'taur_ to join him or her at the summit."

Daniel pushed his glasses up his nose and said in the direction of his notebook, "It's funny--Kasuf was chosen as _lo'taur_ to Ra when he was about my age, and then he led the charge that freed Abydos from the Goa'uld. I might as well follow in someone's footsteps, huh?"

"I won't order you to do it, son," Hammond repeated. "It's up to you."

But Jack knew, as he watched Daniel, what the decision would be.

...x...

**_Two Days Ago  
Revanna; 1500 hrs_**

Zipacna attacked while Daniel and Jacob were at the summit.

"Where's Mansfield and his team?" Jack asked as he and Teal'c finally met Carter stumbling out of the crumbling Tok'ra tunnel.

She shook her head. "Dead. Elliot almost got out...but I couldn't save him. They're all gone."

Damn. Elliot had been a good kid on his first mission, and SG-17 a good team. And the Tok'ra couldn't afford any losses, much less everyone still in these tunnels.

"Weren't you with Aldwin?" she asked.

"Dead," Teal'c answered shortly. She grimaced.

"Come on," Jack ordered, running toward the ring room. "They're gonna keep bombing us until we cave in. We've gotta get to the surface and make for the 'gate."

...x...

"There has to be a way to reprogram this sensor," Carter said, frustrated, once they reached the surface and found the beacon that the Tok'ra had sent to broadcast. "This encryption..."

Jack looked around impatiently, half-expecting Jaffa to jump out at them any second. "What's it broadcasting now?"

"Probably the basic Tok'ra warning, sir--'assume no survivors, get out of here.'"

Crap. He glanced at Teal'c, who returned a solemn look. If rescue was a no-go, the only other option was to try to fight their way to the Stargate, and they all knew that would be suicide or, worse, possible capture and the prospect of divulging secure information. "Carter..."

"Maybe..." she said, then teased out a crystal. "I can't reprogram it to change the message, but I think I _can_ deactivate the shielding mechanism and destroy the beacon. At least if my dad flies over, he won't get the message to go away."

"Can't you send an SOS?"

"Doubt we have the time to figure it out, sir."

Jack made a face, but it would be better than nothing. "Do it," he ordered.

"Teal'c," Carter said as she went to work again. "Do you have a zat? The electricity should be enough to destroy the message once I get...this...out..." She ripped a panel of crystals out of the sensor. "There. Teal'c?"

"Stand back," Teal'c said, so Jack took his place on lookout while he moved toward the sensor. A quiet zat blast, and the light on the sensor faded out.

"Uh," Carter said, staring at it. "Well, it's not much, but--"

_"Guys, this is Daniel--if that was you, you'd better answer right now,"_ a very familiar voice said suddenly from their radios, and then, _"Am I on the right channel?"_

"Yes," Jack hissed, and reached up quickly to his radio. "SG-1's all here. The planet's swarming with Jaffa, and we could really use a lift home. We're at the sensor."

There was a pause, and then, _"Slight problem,"_ Jacob's voice answered. _"The sky's swarming with Jaffa and ships, too, and I'm not sure our cargo ship's going to make it in one piece. We were about to turn around and go, so we're not even close to you."_

"Crap," Jack said, squinting skyward.

_"We'll do our best. You might have to make your way to us on foot if we can't get close. Here goes nothing,"_ Jacob said, and Jack let out a sigh of relief--if Jacob and Selmak could maneuver their way through a minefield, they could probably make it past a few gliders.

Except that, suddenly, sounds of ships firing came in the distance. "There!" Teal'c said, pointing.

"They must've been hit," Jack said, squinting in that direction--it was way too far out for him to see anything--and trying to figure out the best way to get there on foot. "They're not getting anywhere near here." _Even if they're not dead before they hit the ground_, he didn't add.

"Sir, there's a ravine that way," Carter said, stopping him when he started out. "We'll get there faster if we go around."

"Undoubtedly, Zipacna's Jaffa will arrive before we," Teal'c said.

Jack bit back a curse. "Well, let's hope the two of them have the sense to get out of their broken ship before that happens," he said.

Their radios crackled again, this time backed by more static. _"Sam?"_ Jacob's voice said, sounding strained. _"Jack? Teal'c?"_

"Dad, are you guys okay?" Carter answered as they ran.

They were never going to make it. Four, five, six seconds passed, and then, _"We're okay, mostly,"_ Daniel said. _"But, uh, the ship's not."_

_"No way we could get it fixed in time,"_ Jacob added. _"The gliders made our position when we landed; they'll be here soon."_

Jack slowed. "Obviously, you guys should start coming to us, then," he told them. "We're...to the west of you."

No one answered.

"Get your asses over here!" Jack snapped into his radio.

_"No,"_ Daniel answered.

_"Danny, you sure about this?"_ Jacob's voice said quietly.

_"Yeah. Jack, Sam, Teal'c, stay where you are and find cover."_

Apprehension stabbed into Jack. He knew that tone of voice. "That's what we're doing," he said through gritted teeth, "which is why you need to get yourselves over here and join us."

_"No time, and without a ship we'd still need to get rid of Zipacna's Jaffa before getting to the 'gate,"_ Daniel said. Without giving them time to answer, he went on, _"I didn't release the poison at the summit. No, listen, Jack!"_ he said even as Jack opened his mouth and started to push the talk button on his radio. _"There was a complication, and you need to hear--"_

_"Later,"_ Jacob said. _"This is more than just our survival, or yours. We picked up some information that cannot die with us. It's about Anubis, so Teal'c, you know what's at stake."_

Jack glanced at Teal'c, who had straightened. "Bad?" he guessed.

"Extremely," Teal'c said.

_"So we've still got the poison,"_ Daniel said, talking faster. _"Osiris made me at the summit--"_

"Osiris?" Carter blurted.

_"--point is, they know there was a Tok'ra spy there, probably an assassin, and Zipacna might even know it was me if Osiris contacted him. They're looking for _me_, and Zipacna knows I'm SGC and allied with the Tok'ra, so he'll think I know the formula for symbiote poison or at least how to contact the Tok'ra, and they'll take me to their base at the 'gate for interrogation. Once I'm there, I'll release the poison and take out everyone at once, and you'll be clear to get to the 'gate, which is why you need to get Teal'c as far away from there as possible until I'm done."_

When he finally stopped, Jack said, "Are you nuts?"

"What about Selmak?" Carter added. "He's vulnerable to the poison, too. Just get over here, and we'll figure out another plan."

A grunt and thumping sounds came through past the static. _"Like we said,"_ Daniel said, breathing hard, _"the ship's pretty messed up. As soon as we get one of these stupid...doors open, Jacob will run and meet you guys. Jacob, over here, I think I can get the escape pod...hatch...open...enough for you to get through. Hit the switch while I pull, yeah?"_

_"Daniel's got a Tok'ra radio on him,"_ Jacob added,_ "which'll only remind the Jaffa that he's with the Tok'ra, and I'll bring another one to you guys"_--another thump and a muffled '_ow_'--_"so we know when he's finished the job."_

_"I told Jacob everything that happened at the summit,"_ Daniel said. _"Got it! Jacob, go, go."_

There was a clanking sound._ "Luck,"_ Jacob's voice said.

_"He's heading toward you guys now. Jack, don't worry--I'll release the poison before they can do anything to me. And...if..."_ He paused but didn't hand the transmission over to them. Jack clenched a fist around his radio, helpless. _"Jacob knows what happened at the summit. The SGC needs to hear, and Selmak's the only one who can find where the Tok'ra went after the attack here. You _have_ to get him to safety."_

"You don't have to do this," Jack said when Daniel finally released the communications. "I don't think you get what Zipacna's buddies are going to do to you. There's always another way."

_"This time, this _is_ the other way,"_ Daniel said firmly. _"I'll be fine--I've got a secret weapon, remember? Just worry about yourselves and make sure you meet up with Jacob. And Teal'c, do not approach the 'gate until Sam says the poison's clear, _cho'qua_?"_

Carter exchanged a look with Teal'c. "This is an unwise plan," Teal'c said, though he didn't order Daniel to get out and run.

Jack started to key his radio again when Daniel said, _"I think I hear them."_

Shit. "Don't get yourself killed," Jack said, because there was nothing else to say when there had to be over a mile between him and them. He started to say something else, then decided not to give the Jaffa any hints that there were other people communicating with the ship.

And then, because it had been pointless to think everything would go according to plan--

_"Ay, yi shay, I see them--they caught Jacob,"_ Daniel said, sounding panicked for the first time.

"Oh god," Carter said. She started to reach for her radio.

_"Dammit,"_ Daniel said. He lowered his voice to a whisper. _"Okay. Ah, damn. Okay, listen, the Jaffa are coming this way. I think Jacob's still got the Tok'ra com he was going to give you; I'll leave mine on the ship, under the panel just under the console. Start toward the ship. By the time you get here, we should be gone and the Jaffa should be gone, so pick up the radio, stay back, and we'll contact you when it's clear."_

"What the hell are you going to do about Selmak and Jacob?" Jack hissed, because Daniel had been taught not to flinch or hesitate when aiming at the enemy, but the one time he would _always_ pause was when a friend was in the way.

_"I don't know!"_ Daniel whispered loudly. _"We'll think of something. Shut up now, they're coming. I have to go. I'm turning communications off."_

"Dammit, Daniel!" Jack tried, but not even static answered him. "Crap." He turned around in a circle, trying to see what was around them, then said, "Carter, you and Teal'c find cover and stay here. I'll get to the ship, get their radio, and try to get as close as I can to monitor their situation. Don't approach until I radio you."

...x...

The com was just where Daniel said he'd leave it, and the clearing where the _teltak_ had landed was abandoned as promised.

Jack made his way alone in the direction of the Stargate but couldn't get close, not the way he had to stop and back away every so often when he met a line of Jaffa; he thought he might suffocate with unbearable frustration if he had to stay crouching in hiding any longer. His one consolation, odd as it was, was that every time he snuck out, he saw Jaffa still standing guard--if Daniel Jackson of SG-1 and Selmak of the Tok'ra had been killed and the symbiote poison discovered, surely there'd be more activity than that. Somewhere out there, Daniel and Jacob and Selmak were still alive. He really hoped they had some brilliant plan to use right now that didn't involve suicide, because Jack had nothing.

And then...

The Tok'ra radio crackled in his pocket. Jack ripped it out and stared at it, not willing to give Zipacna any unnecessary clues.

A muffled, flattened cough came from the radio.

Jack's hand tightened around it, and he forced himself to remember that, if they were being tortured, letting Zipacna know someone was listening would only make things worse. Their only hope of survival was to make sure Zipacna thought Daniel and Jacob were alone and vulnerable enough that they wouldn't look too hard for other threats. But then--

_"Jack! Sam! Jack!"_ Jacob screamed through the radio, his voice hoarse and cracking with desperation. _"Help me!"_

Not stopping to wonder how or why Jacob was still alive when logic said he should be dead or dying or shot, Jack leapt out, holding his gun in one hand and the radio in the other as he sprinted in the direction of the Stargate. "Jacob, where are you?" he barked into his com device.

_"Stargate,"_ Jacob's voice said. He coughed. _"Daniel...they sh-shot... The pois...poison..."_

A pair of Jaffa--sentries, probably--were convulsing on the ground in front of him. Jack glanced at them as he ran past, just to make sure they were dying the way it looked like they were, then continued on, listening for more groans of more dying Jaffa because that would lead him to the center of camp. "How"--Jack stumbled over a Jaffa's body, caught himself, and went on--"How bad?" he asked.

No one answered.

"Jacob!"

_"I think he's dead,"_ Jacob mumbled.

"Dial Earth," Jack ordered, because that _wasn't possible_. "Jacob, get help."

_"Trying,"_ Jacob said.

Snarling, he stuffed the Tok'ra radio back into his pocket as he reached the outer perimeter of Zipacna's base camp.

"Jacob!" he yelled into the air. "_Daniel_! Where are you!" No one answered. Jack sped up and ran and ran and ran, ignoring the men writhing on the ground in pain until he reached the main camp.

At first, he couldn't see anything but a mass of dying Jaffa and a mothership hovering overhead, just in front of the Stargate. And then someone moved.

Jack turned toward the movement to see Jacob on the ground, pulling himself toward the DHD. "Jake!"

Sluggishly, Jacob turned to face him. "There," he rasped.

A flash of color among the armored Jaffa caught his eye. His first thought was that it was from that ridiculous _lo'taur_ uniform the Tok'ra had put Daniel in, but it didn't take long to realize it was Zipacna, supine, eyes open in death. Still, if Zipacna was there, Daniel couldn't possibly be far...

And meters away, he saw Daniel, face-down, blood smeared over the glint of his clothing, and _god_ there was smoke rising from his body and he wasn't moving--

"Daniel," Jack said, dropping to his knees and pulling him onto his back as gently as possible. "Daniel!" His heart--there was a pulse, thready and erratic, and he wasn't breathing, but he was alive--"He's alive," Jack heard himself say.

"Go," Jacob said. Jack glanced over his shoulder to see Jacob drop onto his elbow. "I'll live. J-jack, he's not...gonna make it--"

Jack ripped his radio from his vest and tossed it within Jacob's reach. "Call Carter," he said, and then hauled Daniel's limp form over his shoulders and sprinted to the DHD.

XXXXX

**25 November 2001; Ra's Pyramid, Abydos; 0115 hrs**

_"It's okay," Sam said when they'd stepped through the wormhole and Daniel stirred on the stretcher, his hand sliding in hers. "We're here."_

_"Oma?" Daniel mumbled._

_Sam frowned but wasn't going to try translating that into sense right now. "It's me, Daniel," she said. "It's Sam."_

_"Carter," Colonel O'Neill said, nodding stiffly to her and then behind her. "Teal'c. Dr. Fraiser. Downstairs--it's the closest thing we'll get to aseptic conditions, no wind and sand blowing..."_

_"No," Daniel moaned as Sam, Janet, and Teal'c started to guide the gurney down the Stargate platform. "No--"_

_The colonel had lifted Sam's end of the stretcher, and she took Daniel's hand again. "Shh," she said again. "Relax. We're just going to bring you down near the secret chamber room, okay?"_

_He stilled for a moment, then said, "A...Aby..."_

_"Abydos, yeah, we're here," she said, and pointed out into the open desert, past the silent Abydons who had gathered there. His head didn't move, but his eyes did, slightly, following her finger. "See?"_

_"Hm," Daniel breathed, closing his eyes, and Sam's only, idiotic thought was that she wished she'd paid more attention to his Egyptian lessons, because Teal'c had fallen out of the habit of being their translator, and from now on, they weren't going to have Daniel to rely on for that._

_A hand touched her shoulder. "Tell me," Sha'uri said quietly, looking up into Sam's eyes. Sam leaned against the wall behind her and wanted to cry. Daniel's sister who was the mother of his baby brother must have sensed it, because she hugged Sam's head to her shoulder and said, "Hush. It will be all right."_

_Sam shook her head. "No, it won't," she said. "He's...he's not going to--"_

_"I know," Sha'uri whispered. "I know. Shh."_

_"I'm sorry," she answered._

_"Tell me," Sha'uri said again, wiping her face of the first tears that had fallen_.

_"We tried to save him," Sam said. "But it was too late."_

...x...

**_Two Days Ago  
Revanna; 2000 hrs_**

"They tried to save me," her dad said when she finally, _finally_ reached him. "It was too late--I'm sorry, Sam."

"I need to get you to the SGC," Sam said, ignoring what he was saying, because she couldn't think about that now, not when the colonel had run home with Daniel and Dad said Daniel was going to die and Teal'c was tearing trees apart in frustration because it wasn't safe for him to come help them yet. "How did you survive the symbiote poison?"

"Selmak's gone," her father said, and suddenly his expression looked so bleak Sam didn't know what where how why. "Tried to save me," he repeated.

"Gone?" she said. He looked at her and blinked, swaying where he sat. "Okay, Dad," Sam said, and threw his arm around her shoulders, trying not to look at the corpses all around them as she staggered upright, supporting his weight. "Let's go. We need to get home, and--and--and we'll get everything worked out, okay?"

"Okay," he whispered.

...x...

**_Two Days Ago  
Infirmary, SGC; 2015 hrs_**

Sam got to the infirmary half an hour after the colonel and Daniel did. Janet set to work on her dad right away and said, "Sam, give me space."

So her feet walked her to the next bed, where Martouf was sitting in a chair, the healing device active on his hand, and Daniel--

"Oh, god," Sam breathed in horror when she caught a glimpse of him.

The colonel finally looked up. "Carter," he said, and then turned around. "Teal'c, your dad?"

"I...I-I don't, uh..." Her eyes were still frozen on Daniel. The colonel stepped in front of her, pulled the curtain shut around Daniel's bed, and drew her away, one step, two steps, three four five six. "He's...I don't know," she said. "Teal'c's still on the planet. Told him not to come for another two hours, just to be sure. Dad is...I think Selmak's dead."

The colonel's expression didn't change. She'd learned, over the years, that that meant more than if it had. "All right," he said. "We'll see what Fraiser says."

"Daniel?" Sam said, trying to pull away from his hands so she could see past him.

"It's better than it was..." the colonel started.

"God," she said again, bringing her hand to her mouth. "He's...?"

"I don't know," the colonel said. "Martouf's been at it for the last half hour."

Sam finally glanced again at Martouf beyond the curtain and realized why he was sitting when he'd have had better reach while standing. The Tok'ra was slumping in the chair, sweat beading on his forehead, one hand holding up the other, the healing device shaking in front of him. Using Goa'uld devices was an intensely precise process, not the uncontrolled bursts of energy Sam achieved with them on the few occasions she'd tried. The worse the damage was, the harder it was to fix it.

"It's not working," Sam said, because she knew that if someone still looked like that after a half an hour, it wasn't working and it wasn't going to work. "Sir?"

Jack shook his head. "I don't know," he said again. "Daniel's--his heart wasn't beating when I got him back. And now it is, but..."

"Staff weapon?" she asked, her brain recalling the ugly, red, oozing wound she'd seen for a moment. "It looked like some kind of burn--"

"Yeah, I thought so, too. I didn't see it. But I'd guess so. There were Jaffa all around him." Jack finally let go of her and scrubbed both hands through his hair. "It's not as...Martouf says there was internal damage. He's been trying to heal that first, but..."

A soft thump sounded. Sam shook herself back into focus and hurried to catch Martouf before he could fall the rest of the way to the floor. "Give that to me," Lantash said, squinting, pointing at the healing device that had fallen off his hand as Janet hurried toward them.

"You can't," Sam said. "You need to rest."

"Daniel is dying," Lantash said, but it sounded sad, not angry, and Sam knew it was true.

"Would it help?" she said, easing him onto the next gurney over with the help of an orderly. She picked up the fallen healing device. "Can you save Daniel with this?"

Lantash squeezed his eyes shut, and then opened them. "It is unlikely," Martouf said. "The damage is too great. I have...delayed it, perhaps. Your surgeons may be able to do more."

Sam turned around and found Jack pressing his fingers gently to Daniel's throat, bending over his mouth. "He's breathing again," Jack said, then looked at the burned skin on his chest. Sam could see another wound on his side, too, his skin far too pale, his arm bent at an odd angle, a small spot near his hip where it looked like the fabric of his clothing had actually melted--God, how many times had he been shot?

"Colonel, Major," Janet said briskly, appearing from behind him. She took a breath, then raised her voice. "You're in the way--_move_. I'll come get you."

...x...

**_Two Days Ago  
Briefing Room, SGC; 2200 hrs_**

"I told you to wait," Sam said when Teal'c ran through the Stargate and rushed up the stairs.

"I waited long enough," Teal'c said stiffly. "What of Daniel Jackson and Jacob Carter?"

"Infirmary," the colonel said.

"What happened?" Teal'c demanded.

"What do you _think_ happened?" the colonel snapped, because they all knew what happened when high-ranking members of the SGC or the Tok'ra fell into enemy hands and were interrogated.

General Hammond shook his head. "There are still a few unanswered questions. The only ones who'd know are Jacob and Daniel, and until the doctors say otherwise..."

"Will they live?"

Sam felt herself scrunching tightly into her seat and forced herself to straighten. "We don't know anything yet," the colonel answered. "Martouf says he can't heal Daniel any more."

"And Selmak's dead," Sam said. "Dad was awake, but he passed out, and now he's...in a coma or something, I don't know."

Teal'c lowered himself slowly into a seat. "The symbiote poison," he said. "Selmak could not have survived." Sam nodded and thought she would feel a lot worse about that once they knew what was happening to everyone else. "But a symbiote releases a toxin into its host when it dies."

"Jolinar didn't," the colonel spoke up. "There must be a way to stop it. Selmak would've tried."

"Dad said Selmak tried to save him," Sam said. "But he's still getting worse--something must've gone wrong. Maybe it happened too fast, and Selmak couldn't--"

The phone rang. General Hammond answered it immediately. Sam didn't realize she was on her feet until she noticed that the colonel and Teal'c were, too. Then the general hung up and said sharply, "Infirmary. Now."

...x...

"We have no choice," Martouf said. "Daniel and Jacob are the only ones who know what happened at the summit. If that information was so important that they were forced to abandon the mission, we cannot let it die with them. Without a symbiote, Jacob _will_ die from Selmak's toxin, perhaps in days, and Daniel will die of his injuries. We cannot be certain if either of them will awaken otherwise."

"No one will implant Daniel Jackson," Teal'c said stonily.

"His advance directive says the same," Janet said into the thick silence. "Even disregarding that, it'd be incredibly risky, to both him and the symbiote. He's not in good shape. At least with General Carter, we can be sure he's not fundamentally against a blending."

"That may be best," Martouf said gravely. "Lantash can certainly neutralize the toxin that is killing Jacob. He is willing to try to save Daniel, but we are not certain; if Lantash takes Daniel as a host and not Jacob, it is possible that both of them will die, and Lantash with them."

"But..." Sam said, looking between Martouf and her dad. Their beds had been pushed close together already, her dad asleep or unconscious. "Maybe Daniel will wake up," she said, and she didn't know what was worse--that Daniel would wake up and give them the information so it was okay if her dad died, or that Martouf was going to lose his symbiote so her dad could live because Daniel might not make it.

"He was no longer breathing when you brought him back," Martouf said. "If it was for a long period of time..."

He stopped, perhaps looking for a tactful way to say it. "A healing device has limits--like brain damage if it's too severe," Janet finished. The colonel twitched but clenched his jaw instead of speaking. "When--_if_ Daniel wakes up, he might not be able to tell us what he learned."

"Are we really picking who's going to be healed based on the value of _intelligence_?" Sam said, unable to believe Janet, of all people, was saying this.

"As I understand it," she said, her voice strained, "both Jacob and Daniel thought it was worth dying for. What it comes down to is what they would have wanted--and which of them is more likely to survive the procedure at all."

Sam fell silent. "What about you?" the colonel said, nodding at Martouf. "I'm talking to you, not your snake. This affects you, too."

"The Tok'ra lost an operative in me when I was programmed to be a _zatarc_," Martouf said, watching Sam. "If Revanna was destroyed and so many lost...we cannot lose Jacob's knowledge, his experience, and his memories of Selmak. Lantash would serve better with him."

But Martouf was _old_, by human standards. This was all but a death sentence for him, too.

"Martouf..." Sam said helplessly. "You're over a hundred years old. Without Lantash--"

"This is my choice," Martouf said firmly. "_Our_ choice--both of us. If Jacob disagrees with the blending when he awakens...we will see. But he _will_ die without Lantash."

Sam looked toward the other end of the infirmary--Daniel wasn't there anymore, though; they'd taken him into surgery. When she looked back, Lantash's eyes glowed. "Major Carter," he said, holding out his hand. She inched closer and grasped it automatically. "Watch over Martouf."

"He'll be fine," she said, insisted, because it wasn't fair that so many pillars of her world could crumble at once.

"No," Lantash said, squeezing her fingers. "There is too much damage from the _zatarc_ technology. Without a symbiote to compensate, he will have great difficulties--I cannot say how much he will remember. And he will grow old quickly--he is older than most unblended humans could ever become."

"We'll take care of him," the colonel said quietly.

"He loves you, Samantha," Lantash said, and Sam didn't even care that everyone from the colonel to Teal'c to the general was listening. "Not for Jolinar, but for the friend you became to us. If he does not remember after I leave him, we wish you to know that."

And before she could answer, Lantash sat up and leaned over her dad where he lay. Martouf's hands held her dad's mouth open, and then Lantash launched himself in. Sam was still closest, and she caught Martouf as he collapsed again.

...x...

**_One Day Ago  
Briefing Room, SGC; 0500 hrs_**

"General Carter hasn't woken up yet," Janet said as they sat around the table. "But his vital signs are much stronger now, and we can't find any traces of the toxin in his blood. I found elevated leukocytes--I'd need more analysis to know for sure, but I'd guess that Lantash released an antibody or some other immune modulator that's neutralizing the toxin and allowing it to be cleared safely. He should wake up as soon as he's rested."

The blending took a lot out of a person, Sam knew. It had taken most of a day before Sam and Jolinar had both been able to be awake at the same time, and her dad hadn't been in good condition when Lantash had blended.

"Martouf's vital signs are also stable for now," Janet said. "I can't say anything about his cognitive state, but the signs of accelerating aging are definitely there. We'll see what we can do for him, but there may not be much we _can_ do."

"What about Daniel?" the colonel said.

"The surgeons went in and closed off some internal bleeding, and we've dressed what wounds we can," Janet said. "But... He suffered some major organ damage."

"Major?" Sam said. "What's major?"

"We think he took at least one staff blast at close range. That he was revived from that at all... Lantash fixed some internal damage better than we could have on our own, but it's not enough. His lungs are barely pulling enough oxygen as it is, with external help, and--"

"Well, he can stay on base, then," she said. "He doesn't have to be active and in the field. He can stay on light duty until--"

"Carter," the colonel said, and she shut up.

"There was some damage to his heart," Janet went on, still not looking up, "consistent with trauma to the torso. Aside from staff weapons, based on patterns of bruising, other...blunt objects were probably used as well--"

"He was beaten and then shot," the colonel said flatly.

Janet nodded. "He's coded twice more since being resuscitated the first time. Again, the boost from the healing device helped, but... He has a weak pulse; that's the best I can say. I don't know if it'll hold, and that's not helping his hypoxia."

"So..." Sam said, her mind floating oddly and not helping her at all. "Then. What?"

"That device can seal off primary injury and stop further tissue damage by speeding natural healing processes," Janet said, "but Daniel wasn't breathing when you brought him back, probably for minutes, at least. A healing device can't reverse severe damage or necrosis, and the brain can't go without oxygen for very long without sustaining significant damage."

"That is why you fear injury to his brain," Teal'c said.

"We won't know unless he wakes up," Janet said, hesitantly. "But I don't think you understand what I'm saying. The healing device revived him, bought a little time, but that's all. His organs are failing. I can't even say anything about infection--and that's always an issue with injuries this severe--or whether he'll be able to fight them off. The state of his cognitive abilities... I don't think it'll matter."

Sam waited for the colonel to say something, or for Teal'c to. Neither of them spoke. "So," Sam said, then cleared her throat. "So what are you saying? That's...that's it?"

"What about our allies?" the colonel said. "Someone'll have something that..." He stopped.

"Colonel, if I thought there was a way, I would ask," the general said. "But who, exactly, do you suggest we ask for help?"

_Tollan, Nox_, Sam thought. _Tok'ra, Asgard_... But none of them could help. They were alone now.

When Janet finally looked up, her eyes were faintly red. "I'm sorry. It's just a matter of time."

"How much time?" the colonel said blandly.

"Ah...days," Janet said. "Maybe less, maybe more. It depends on how...how we proceed with his treatment--the amount of painkillers we allow him, the degree of life support..."

"Days," the colonel repeated.

"We could sustain him artificially for a little more time, sir--mechanical ventilation, intravenous nutrition--but I won't go against the wishes in Daniel's living will," she said. Sam knew, of course, what Daniel's will said. They all knew each other's wishes, just in case, and had hoped they'd never need to use that knowledge.

"Will he awaken?" Teal'c said.

"He's still under from the surgery," Janet said. "If we ease him off the sedation, he might wake up, yes."

"Can we see him?" Sam said. "Or...sit with him? And with Martouf or my dad?"

Janet nodded. "In fact, I'd suggest it. They'll want to see a friendly face if they wake."

XXXXX

**25 November 2001; Infirmary, SGC; 2300 hrs**

_Teal'c touched Daniel Jackson's cold hand and pulled the blanket higher, tucking the edges carefully under him._

_"Teal'c," Daniel Jackson said softly, slurring what sound he forced through his lips, then stopped to draw a breath. A thin line of red began to run down his chin. Teal'c checked to make sure the blood was only from biting his lip before gently wiping it away. "Is..."_

_Major Carter was watching Dr. Fraiser work, standing stiffly next to O'Neill, who sat on the other side of the bed and rubbed one of Daniel Jackson's hands slowly in his own. Teal'c finished with the blanket, glanced up at Dr. Fraiser, and said, "You should conserve your strength."_

_Daniel Jackson struggled for a moment until Teal'c freed his arm from the blanket again, and his fingers closed weakly on Teal'c's arm. "Doesn' matter if...'m tired."_

_Teal'c did not know what to say to that. A flash of pain crossed over Daniel Jackson's features, and Teal'c gently set his hand back down, disentangling his fingers. "Nonetheless, it is time to rest."_

_Instead, Daniel Jackson watched him through eyes fogged with pain and medicine and said, "What...d'you th-think...after?"_

_Major Carter pressed her lips together. O'Neill's face did not change, but he stilled. "It is not for us to know," Teal'c said honestly. "It is for the _kalach_ to explore. I believe there are worlds beyond ours."_

_"Still... You still...believe?" Daniel Jackson whispered._

_Teal'c suppressed his own uncertainty--for those who knew what it was to lose a faith to the Goa'uld, it was impossible not to be uncertain--and said, "I believe there are worlds the Goa'uld will never be able to reach."_

_"Sounds nice," Daniel Jackson murmured. Teal'c could not tell whether he believed it. "Will you..._kalach_--" He stopped, and Teal'c almost thought he had fallen into unconsciousness when he said, "Abydos."_

_"Abydos will be fine," O'Neill said. "We'll take of 'em."_

_But Daniel Jackson turned his head to look up at Teal'c, and suddenly, he knew. "He wishes to go to Abydos," Teal'c said, "to allow his soul to rest in his home."_

_Immediately, Dr. Fraiser said, "Daniel, I can care for you here; without equipment, you'd be--"_

_"Dying," Daniel Jackson whispered. "Please."_

_"We'll take you home," O'Neill promised. _I'm sorry_, his eyes said. Daniel Jackson had drifted off again and did not see it. Teal'c knew that all of their eyes said the same._

...x...

**_Five Days Ago  
Archaeology Office, SGC; 1900 hrs_**

"I'm fine, Teal'c," Daniel Jackson said. "Look, it's late. You don't have to stay here with me."

"I would take your place if I could," Teal'c said, not moving from where he sat, "but since I cannot, I will ensure that you understand the System Lords more fully so that you can complete this task."

"And I'm studying, Teal'c. I'll be all right. I just..." He stopped.

"You would prefer another way," Teal'c said. Daniel Jackson nodded, staring at his notes and not reading them. "As you said, each time we meet a System Lord, we aim to kill."

"Except this time it won't be by accident, as usual," Daniel Jackson said wryly, though he still looked troubled. "Look, killing them all with a poison while they're at a meeting is morally...maybe not different from killing them in battle. It's just...there's a reason people follow different rules in combat. We don't go by that when we don't have to. This just seems..."

"If they live," Teal'c pointed out, "each one may kill many more humans and Jaffa."

"I know," Daniel Jackson said. He shuffled through his notes again. "What do _you_ think of this?"

"I have no better alternatives at this time," Teal'c answered truthfully.

"Yeah, I know. And I'll do it; I just never thought... Okay. I'm good. Just, uh..."

"We should review again," Teal'c suggested, taking the notes away from him.

Daniel Jackson nodded. "Right. Let's do that."

"Ba'al," Teal'c said.

"Ba'al," Daniel Jackson recited. "Said to be the son of El Elyon and a--"

"In Goa'uld."

After only a short pause, Daniel Jackson began again. "_Ba'al, kal'ma n'El Elyon. Hilk'sha--_"

"_Helk...sha_," Teal'c corrected. "Again."

"_Helk sha_," Daniel Jackson said, closing his eyes, his lips moving as if to erase the Abydonian pronunciation from his mind and cement the correct dialect. "_Helk sha_,_ mar tokeem..._"

...x...

**_Two Days Ago  
Revanna; 1930 hrs_**

_"...took Daniel back to the SGC,"_ Jacob Carter's voice said feebly through their radios. _"Teal'c, don't come. Another...hour or two before the...the poison dissipates."_

"Stay there, Dad," Major Carter said, standing. "I'm coming to get you." She released the radio and turned to Teal'c. "You heard him--wait two hours before you try to get to the Stargate."

"He said Daniel Jackson may be dying," Teal'c said.

Major Carter stiffened but didn't turn around. "And unless you think you'll do us any good dead, Teal'c, you'll follow orders. Two hours."

Teal'c gritted his teeth and watched as she left, leaving him alone to wait.

...x...

**_One Day Ago  
Infirmary, SGC; 0900 hrs_**

O'Neill and Major Carter had dozed off in their chairs around Daniel Jackson's bed. "I'm sorry I can't do more," Dr. Fraiser told him quietly, once they knew there was nothing left to do.

Teal'c watched Daniel Jackson sleep, attached to too many wires and tubes--for water, medicine, air, electrical monitors, things Teal'c did not recognize even after years on Tau'ri. He did not look alive. Teal'c had sometimes told him he should be more silent, but he would have given his life to see Daniel Jackson speak now. "Is he in pain?"

"He...will be if he wakes up," she admitted. "I'm doing what I can, but too much of this"--she held up a syringe--"could stop his heart prematurely." Teal'c glanced up to see her face, and she said, "Don't think I haven't thought about it."

"But you will not," he said, uncertain whether to be grateful or resentful for it.

"Maybe I can't save him," she said, "but I won't kill him."

A soft knock sounded, and Teal'c turned to see a nurse pull the door open. "General Carter's awake," she said. "He wants to talk to SG-1."

Teal'c looked back at Daniel Jackson, unwilling to abandon him now, but Dr. Fraiser said, "I'll stay. You need to see what's going on."

Teal'c nodded and followed the nurse out of their room and into another room, where Jacob Carter lay. "I'll get General Hammond," the nurse said, and went to a nearby telephone.

"Teal'c," Jacob Carter said, struggling to sit up.

"The blending was successful?" Teal'c said, automatically moving to help him into a seat.

"Yeah. Lantash is in here. He..." Jacob Carter trailed off, his eyes unfocused. "God. It's weird."

"Are you well?" Teal'c said.

Jacob Carter took a breath and nodded. "Will be. Teal'c, I need to--where are Jack and Sam?"

"They are with Daniel Jackson," Teal'c said. "I will relay the information to them."

"Daniel?"

Teal'c raised his chin and tried very hard not to say aloud that Daniel Jackson would still be safe if he had not joined Jacob Carter on that mission. It was not the man's fault, and it would be cruel to say now. "Near death," he finally said.

Jacob Carter closed his eyes. He wore the expression of one who had known too much grief too quickly--it was not only the loss of Selmak, Daniel Jackson, and many Tok'ra that he felt now, but also that of Martouf, though Lantash.

"Jake," General Hammond said from the doorway. "I know you've been through a lot, but--"

"George, it's Anubis," Jacob Carter said, pulling himself together.

General Hammond looked confused, but Teal'c had been told, as every Jaffa child was, of Anubis. "He was banished," Teal'c said. _He is a legend told to frighten children_, he almost added, but he knew Anubis had been real once.

"Apparently not well enough," Jacob Carter said. "And he's back. We don't know how or where or...or anything, but Osiris and Zipacna are both working for him. We think Tanith might be working for him, too, so--"

"I killed Tanith," Teal'c interrupted. "Less than two weeks ago."

Jacob Carter looked surprised. "Oh. Good. Anyway, Anubis sent Osiris to the summit--I think that's why Daniel hesitated to begin with. Said something about...because Osiris's host wasn't a lost cause. She's the woman from Earth, right--Gardner?"

Teal'c nodded. "He gave his word to a man who knew her that he would try to save her."

"Well, I thought it was going to ruin everything. Turns out it was lucky, because that was how he found out Osiris was just the messenger for Anubis. The System Lords accepted Anubis back--every one of them except Yu--"

"Why would they do such a thing?" Teal'c said.

"They're scared," Jacob Carter said. "Major players have been taken out in the last couple of decades alone. Over the last year, someone's been killing the remaining System Lords' armies, and once they found out it was Anubis..." He shook his head. "I don't know how he got so powerful so fast, or how he got back at all, but the System Lords are scared of him. And he's going to attack Earth. We don't know when, but he wants you off the map."

Despite not knowing the name of Anubis, General Hammond understood enough to say, "We're protected by the Asgard treaty."

"Anubis isn't a System Lord yet," Jacob Carter said. "It's a flimsy loophole, I know, but they're gonna use it. Afterward, he'll take his place as a System Lord, and maybe the Asgard will try to stop him, but it'll be too late for us by then. He's coming, and from what we heard, he's going to come in strong."

"I see," General Hammond said. "Anything else?"

Jacob Carter rubbed his forehead. "Little details--might be useful eventually. But that's the main bit. Uh...there are things Daniel mentioned about Anubis's forces and technology--rumors, mostly, some supported by Osiris but a lot of it unsubstantiated. Some of it struck us as odd--unusual for Goa'uld tactics--and I'll want to compare it to some of the reports we've gotten from...from Tok'ra operatives."

General Hammond glanced at Teal'c. "I need to know about this Anubis."

"Sir, I can tell you of him," Selmak--not Selmak; _Lantash_--spoke up. "Let Teal'c stay with Daniel."

"All right," General Hammond agreed.

"But first I must know--where is Martouf?"

"He hasn't woken up yet," a nurse said. "He's, uh...his aging has accelerated, but if he wakes up before...well. We'll send for you immediately if he wakes up."

Lantash closed Jacob Carter's eyes and retreated. When the eyes opened again, it was Jacob Carter, looking pained, who said, "Well. I guess I'll have to tell you what I know from...from what Selmak left me."

...x...

Teal'c emerged from _kelno'reem_ with the feeling that there were eyes on him. "Daniel Jackson," he said, standing up. Daniel Jackson blinked slowly, then reached up to his own face. "Do not," Teal'c said, catching his hand before he could pull the oxygen tubing from his nose.

Almost immediately, he moaned, squeezing his eyes shut again. "T...teal--"

"Hush," Teal'c said, holding him still with one hand on his shoulder. "Dr. Fraiser!"

Before the doctor could arrive, O'Neill and Major Carter woke, as well. "Daniel," O'Neill said. "Hold still. The doctor's on her way."

"What..." Daniel Jackson whispered, and stopped with a hiss.

"Hey there," Dr. Fraiser said, hurrying to the bedside. "I'm going to give you something for the pain, Daniel. Just hold on a second."

"H-have to..." Daniel Jackson started, but he had to stop partway through to breathe. "Anubis--"

"We know," O'Neill said. "Jacob told us--don't worry. We know all about Anubis and what he's planning."

Daniel Jackson turned slowly toward him and Major Carter, then closed his eyes. Teal'c resisted the urge to shake him awake again, fearing that he would sleep forever now.

* * *

_**Present Time  
Ra's Pyramid, Abydos**_

"You hold tightly to them," Oma Desala said. Daniel turned away from the vision of his friends and his family around him. Well, _they_ were the reality, technically; he was the one in a vision now, while they were the ones who were real. "As they do to you."

"They're...everything," Daniel explained. She folded her hands in front of herself but didn't answer. "Do you understand?"

"You must release your burden if you are to continue your journey," she told him.

He looked around himself. He knew he was in the catacombs of an Abydonian pyramid, physically, but everything looked and felt like his office. Robert's office, at first, and then both of theirs, and then Daniel's, and soon no one's. There was even a report he hadn't finished--he'd put it aside when Ren'al had come with news of the System Lords' summit. Daniel picked it up, aware of Oma Desala still standing near him, even as occasional whispers trickled through from his friends, just out of sight.

"Continue my journey," Daniel said. "What does that mean? What's after all this?"

Oma's expression didn't change. "If you know immediately the candlelight is fire, then the meal was cooked long ago."

He resisted the urge to rip apart the phantom paper in his phantom hands. "I'm _dying_," he said. "I really don't think I have time to figure out what you mean now."

"One cannot reach enlightenment by running from death," she chided.

"Right. Right, okay," Daniel said, knowing he couldn't be more than a day from death, though he didn't know how time flowed here. "Then...then tell me what to do."

"Many roads lead to the great path," Oma said. "Only the willing find their way."

"I'm willing," Daniel said. "You're talking about Ascension, right, to another plane? Like what you told me about on Kheb? I'm willing."

"The river tells no lies," she said, "though, standing on the shore, the dishonest man still hears them."

Daniel clenched his fists and realized there was nothing in his hands--his desk and everything had returned to the way it had been. "Okay," he said, steeling himself and deciding that, if he was about to die, he really had nothing to lose by being absolutely truthful. "Fine. You want the truth? I don't want to die--I don't want to _leave_, not while this war is still going on, and if that makes me a coward or...or...or unenlightened, then I guess that's going to be a problem."

Oma gave him a tiny smile but didn't speak.

Feeling stubborn and terrified all at once, Daniel folded his arms.

In the end, she was more patient than he was and he was still dying, so he said, "Anubis is out there. I don't know much about him and how he got so powerful or..." Oma narrowed her eyes. "You know! You must know what I'm talking about, right, with Anubis and everything? All you...big...glowy octopuses..." Daniel stopped. "I sound like Jack."

"Daniel?" Jack's voice said.

The room began to fade around him. Daniel felt the beginnings of pain and shied away reflexively, pulling the illusion more firmly around him.

And then, "Daniel, are you--can you still hear us?"

Turning toward Jack's voice, Daniel felt the peaceful vision slip away, and then--

...x...

It hurt to breathe.

Perhaps, if he had been required to do anything aside from breathing, Daniel might have understood more clearly what else was hurting; for now, he only knew it felt like he was being crushed every time he took a breath. Janet's blurry face hovered just at the edge of his vision.

"Jack," he managed. He knew his lips were moving, but he didn't hear the words. He couldn't think. There was something wrong with him, more than just medicine and pain clouding his thoughts.

"Hey," Jack said, kneeling beside him on the floor of the pyramid. His knees probably hurt. Others were spread in the background, and if Daniel's eyes had been working properly or his head less fuzzy, he might have been able to identify them. "Look. Uh, I just wanted to...say..."

Daniel felt his lips twitch as Jack trailed off and scratched his head. But Daniel thought he knew everything he needed to know and hear from Jack, and he still had something to say himself. "Not...your fault," he said, fighting past the pain to draw enough air to speak. "I had to."

Jack's expression went carefully blank. "I almost adopted you once," he said, almost to himself. "Feels like a long time ago."

They didn't talk about that much; things had changed. It wasn't something they could afford to have between them, interfering in the field or on the job or in their lives. It had been easier in some ways when they had been rescuer and rescued or the colonel and the kid, but being Jack and Daniel was better, even though it was harder.

"Didn't need...father," Daniel said, frustrated that he couldn't explain it properly. He had the words somewhere, but they wouldn't come out, and he didn't have the strength to say them. They would have been caught in a loop of father and child, and he'd needed Jack more than he'd needed a father.

And he only needed Jack's expression to remember that neither of them really needed words anyway, not for this. "I, uh," Jack said quietly. "You know...that I--"

"Mm," Daniel said, despite not knowing exactly what Jack had been about to say. Whatever it was, he knew it already, and if he didn't, it wasn't worth saying. "Yes."

"Dan'yel," his brother's voice said, and Daniel fought his drooping eyelids and the creeping black bliss long enough to see Skaara join Jack at his side and hear him say, "_Sinu'ai_--"

...x...

Daniel sighed in relief and disappointment when he found himself back in his office, dressed as if to go back to work, free of pain and with his friends nowhere in sight.

"_Your name will be known to all,_" Skaara was saying, somewhere just out of view.

"I don't want that," Daniel said. "Skaara, you know better than that."

"_But I will remember you as you were,_" Skaara finished. "_You are our brother._" Daniel turned around to see Skaara kneeling just before the desk in his mind. Sha'uri stood just behind, almost as much mother to Daniel as she had been sister, and for a moment, he imagined that she met his gaze, but she was looking past him.

"Maybe I'll see Shifu," Daniel said, Sha'uri's face reminding him of that possibility.

They disappeared.

He touched a desk that wasn't there with fingers that didn't really feel and wondered aloud, "Why are we here? Why my office at the SGC?"

"The journey was begun years ago," Oma Desala said.

Deciding to take that at what passed for face value for Ascended beings, Daniel said, "And my journey began at the SGC, in this office. Well, not if you count the part about being kidnapped and carried through the Stargate..." Oma raised an eyebrow. "Willingness," he amended. "It's about choices. When I chose this life, it was at the SGC, not in a prison on Chulak."

She didn't answer. Then again, there were a lot of other journeys to which she could be referring. He'd started another journey a few years ago, too, on Kheb, although he'd fooled himself about so many things that time that he wasn't sure that had been real, either.

The point was that the journey wasn't over. He hadn't finished whatever he'd thought he'd started on Kheb, and this, here... He looked back down at his desk and couldn't avoid the wave of mingled nostalgia and urgency that swept over him. "I'm not done," he said.

"At the end of one path, another begins," Oma said.

"There _is_ such a thing as a cul-de-sac," Daniel quipped, but then the idea that he might have reached a dead end was almost unbearable. He could face anything ahead, he thought, except the possibility that it was _all_ over.

"Not all paths are easy to reach," she acknowledged.

Daniel bit his lip. "We killed Apophis," he explained, needing her to understand. "And we always knew that wasn't going to be it, and even the Goa'uld wouldn't be the end, not really, but now, with Anubis...he's back, and it's worse. You have to know that, right?"

"All things are known to those who have achieved enlightenment."

"So then you know," Daniel said. "You know how much we have to do. I can't leave now." He sighed, frustrated. "Can't you...heal me? Or something?" Mother Nature could surely heal if she could kill the way that Daniel knew she could.

She tilted her head slightly. "Some paths," she said, "bear greater fruit than others."

"Is that a 'no?'"

"Your bodily wounds are not for me to heal. But for those who have achieved Ascension, physical form has no meaning."

He started to ask exactly what Ascension entailed--if that was the path with more fruit--but decided to avoid another warning about cooking meals on a candle. "Why me?" Daniel said.

Oma spread her arms. "The journey is for all who are willing. You have taken the first steps on the journey."

"No, that's not good enough," Daniel said, too annoyed to care (_yet_) that he was wasting time arguing against this when he'd been pleading for her to help him just moments ago. "I can Ascend just because I happened to be the one who went to Kheb? People are dying all the time. People have died to save hundreds--millions of others. They've died for _me_. How are they not worthy?"

"The path is not smooth," Oma said. "Nor is it easy to find."

"What makes me so special? That I was on that one mission? That I knew Shifu? Is this some...some sort of otherworldly nepotism? What?"

"When you came to Kheb," Oma said, "you took the beginning of an unknown journey when it was offered to you. Perhaps you do not realize how few people are willing to take that step."

"Well, then, why don't you _show_ the path to _them_?" Daniel snapped.

"I show it now to you," she said calmly.

"Daniel?" Sam said. He looked around to see his friend kneeling, touching her fingers to what must be the edge of a stretcher where his body was lying. She'd been crying recently. Daniel sighed. "I don't know if you can hear me."

"He's in a coma, Sam," Janet said.

"I can hear you," Daniel said, even though he knew his lips weren't speaking, and she didn't hear.

Sam bit her lip, looking over her shoulder, then turned back to him, reaching out one hand. Daniel closed his eyes and imagined he could feel her fingers gently smoothing his hair, the way she did when he was hurt. "I don't know if you, uh, heard before," she said, "but my dad's okay. He told us all about Anubis."

"Good," Daniel said, genuinely relieved.

"We still don't know exactly what happened to you. I mean, we can guess. But you were pretty worried about Anubis, so..." She cleared her throat. "I thought you should know."

"What about Selmak?" he said.

"You're probably wondering about Selmak," Sam said, and Daniel allowed himself a moment to think of how much he'd miss these moments when he could barely tell where his thoughts ended and hers began. "He, uh, didn't make it." Daniel bit his lip hard. "But Dad says he died doing what he thought was right."

"He died because I killed him," he said.

"And he says to th..." She stopped, rubbed her nose, and tried again. "...to thank you for...for saving us and not letting Selmak's death be for nothing."

But he knew that look on her face; he knew something was missing. "Sam? What aren't you telling me?" Was Jacob alive but gravely wounded? Had they had to do something drastic to save him?

She took a deep breath. "Um. I want to...thank you, too. I've learned so much--_we've_ learned so much together, Daniel. You've...you make me think about things that I would never have thought about before. You changed me. You change people. And I'm sorry we let this happen."

"Don't be sorry," Daniel said, anxious that he might die knowing that all of his friends felt bad about it. Everyone had always felt vaguely guilty about his situation, he knew that, and if they thought he was dead because they hadn't guarded him well enough... "Sam, don't."

But her specter was fading already, and the last he saw of Sam was her miserable expression as she stared at his broken body, still talking, but her words fading, becoming too muffled for him to hear.

And Oma was still watching. He wondered what she saw--him, here, whole and healthy in his mind, or a weak and dying man surrounded by those holding a last vigil. Maybe she could see both and knew just how close he was to being gone. "You hold fast to this world," she observed again.

Daniel stared at the spot where Sam's image had vanished. "It's my world," he said. "They're my people."

"Beyond this plane," she said, "the worlds are endless."

"All of that can be mine," he said, half in question.

She nodded once. "If you choose it."

"I'm not ready," he said honestly, and if it was selfish or cowardly, it was at least true. "I don't... There's so much left to do." There was so much life left to live. He was smart, young, and strong. He'd seen more war than many of Earth's seasoned veterans. By the time he was no longer the youngest member of the SGC, only people like Teal'c, Jack, and Sam would be more experienced, either at a desk or in negotiations or in battle, and he would have been just reaching the peak of his abilities. He could have done so much, and now he never would.

"You believe your journey here is not yet over," Oma said.

"I could have done so much more," he said.

"You have saved many lives and helped countless people," she said.

"I've hurt just as many," he said. "Every time I helped someone, I hurt someone else. I thought the Goa'uld war was beginning to end, and now, I find out that it's only going to get worse, and..." He gestured around himself. "How many millions of people have already died because of me? Or how many are going to die because I didn't do enough?"

"Your people--the Abydons--believe that a soul is weighed in the afterlife," Oma said.

Daniel took a breath and nodded. "You're saying my soul wouldn't pass. I can't say I'm entirely surprised."

"A soul cannot be weighed--" she started.

"Oh, that's--that's great," he said. "So my people's religion isn't even valid."

"Then it is your people's and not yours?"

"What difference does it make?" he said, meaning '_yes_.' It had been a long time since he had dared to believe anything the myths said.

"You are the only one who can judge yourself," she said. "Your belief will decide your fate."

"So...I have to believe I'm worthy of Ascending," Daniel clarified. "That's what you mean? I play the role of Ma'at and my belief is the scale that measures my worth?"

How could he be worthy of this chance when no one had offered it to his parents and his brothers who had died to protect Abydos, or to Robert Rothman who had died for him, or Lieutenant Elliot who had been so eager to serve Earth and had died on his very first mission? How could she think Daniel deserved a reward for all he had done in life?

"Did you see what I did?" he said. "I walked into a room full of men and women and wanted to assassinate them, even the ones who were innocent victims. I argued that it was the best way."

"Do you regret it now?" Oma said.

"I don't know," Daniel said. "I didn't realize I'd become..." He stopped, remembering that day when he'd sat in the briefing room, feeling so numb that he was utterly calm, and actually told Jack that they were all killers already. He had trained to fight and kill because he had needed to in order to find his brother or his sister or Shifu; he hadn't realized until then what would be left of him when he had nothing to look for anymore.

In the end, he'd balked at killing a room full of System Lords because he'd seen a single, innocent, salvageable host and remembered that that wasn't who he was supposed to be. Still, he had no doubt that he would have done it--would have pushed the button and killed them all--if it hadn't become strategically unwise. When had he begun to judge a life by its strategic value?

"What if I don't think I did enough to balance the things I did wrong?" he said.

Perhaps Oma could read his thoughts, or perhaps he had said them aloud here in his mind. "Your successes and failures do not add up to the sum of your life. There is only one thing we can ever truly control: whether we are good or evil."

Good or evil. There was no such thing as good and evil, because good for one person was evil to another. Saving a thousand people usually meant killing one or letting one die. Sometimes, they killed thousands and saved one. "I don't know which I am," he said.

"What you have done is not who you are," she said again. "Who are you, Daniel?"

"I've tried to be good," he said.

"Yes," Oma agreed, but they were still there, and he was still dying.

"How can I leave all of this behind--unfinished like this?"

"How can you not?" she pointed out. "You hold what is no longer yours. You cannot go back. You can only decide how you will go forward."

"What is forward?" he asked.

Smiling faintly, she said, "Do you want to know?"

"Yes," he couldn't help saying. She smiled a little wider, and Daniel looked back down at the image of his desk, running his hand once along its surface. "If there's something there...how can I not want to know?"

"Do you fear it?" Oma asked. "That you do not know what lies before you?"

Daniel nodded, but even as he did, he thought of the spark of excitement he felt each time he waited for the computer screen to show him the latest MALP telemetry, or the way it felt to stand in front of a Stargate and know that something wondrous could be on the other side.

"But that's part of the fun," he said as lightly as he could, thinking that that was what Jack might have said. It wasn't quite a joke, not for him or any of them. Experience meant that some of the instinctual fear of the unknown manifested as anticipation instead. Fear never disappeared completely, but it sharpened things, too; Daniel thought that, if they stopped being just a little afraid of what they might find and of what might happen when they found it, it would mean that it didn't really matter anymore.

"Then," she said, "you have only to decide."

Oma Desala had rained lightning and death on a thousand Jaffa and had carried Shifu on a storm and given a life to a baby whom others would have condemned to experiments or death. She understood things and saw things no one possibly could without being like her. Maybe he could do more this way. He was so limited now--he was one man translating texts or shooting a gun, and when one Goa'uld fell, another rose to take its place. Now, more than ever, they needed someone who could do more.

And enlightenment meant knowing, too. If Daniel had one purpose that he had tried to hold onto at the SGC, even through all the turmoil, it was to know--to learn and to _want_ to learn. What if he could be that person again?

He had to commit to it, though, or it wouldn't count. Teal'c always said that it was better not to act at all than to act halfheartedly.

Even knowing the answer before he said it, Daniel had to ask, "Are my parents there?"

Oma shook her head gently. "No."

"What about my brothers from Abydos, my friends from the SGC?"

"No, Daniel. This path is not that of the dead."

"What about Shifu?"

She paused, then said, "Yes. Shifu has been watching over you, Daniel. He is waiting. But do not take this journey forward to seek out your past."

"No, I--I know. I'm not," he said, realizing that he was speaking now as if the decision were already made. Perhaps it was. "But I'll take comfort in what I can. I can do that, right?"

"Then you have chosen?" Oma said.

"Daniel Jackson," Teal'c said.

He turned and saw his friend, his teacher, his brother standing before him, holding an Abydonian funerary statue. "_Tek'ma'tae_," Daniel said.

"I promised you once that I would speak the words for Skaara or Sha'uri if they fell in battle, to carry their souls home," Teal'c said. "We did not know then that you would join us in the fighting. I did not know that your brother and sister would be saved and you would fall."

"No one knows that kind of thing," Daniel said. "You couldn't know."

"Know this," Teal'c said. "In you, we will have lost a great warrior in the fight against the Goa'uld."

"Bad timing, then," Daniel said helplessly. "Because it's about to get a lot worse."

Teal'c opened his mouth, then closed it again, his throat working. Daniel had seen Sam cry before, and he had seen Jack in his own sharp, jagged rituals of grief, but Teal'c always grieved alone, in meditation, not like this. The Jaffa took a breath and said, in a low voice, "And I will have lost my _chal'ti_ and my brother."

As Teal'c set down the statue and faced Daniel's body and began to speak, Daniel turned to Oma and said, "He called me a warrior against the Goa'uld. I wasn't always."

"Do you wish to be?" she said.

"I want...to do good."

She smiled again.

Daniel took a breath. "I want to do good," he repeated, weighing the sentiment and looking for cracks, but it was true, through and through. He had done things in the past that he wasn't proud of, he had made mistakes, and he had sought selfish revenge and found it lacking. But he had always tried to be good, not evil, and now, at this moment, he could accept that it was so.

"I know that," Oma said.

"I want to Ascend," he said, relieved once he had said it. "I do. And...once it's over, I'll be completely and utterly for it. But is it...would it be okay if I waited until...until the end? Just...let me have whatever I have left?"

"Your body has entered a deep sleep," she said gently. "It won't be long...and I cannot see what good it would do you."

"I know," he said, as Teal'c said, _return to your home on Abydos, you will see many worlds, you will be remembered, we will remember you._

Then Teal'c stopped and looked up, past Daniel. "Jacob Carter!" he said, sounding surprised, and his image disappeared.

"What--" Daniel said, not sure what was going on. He turned around, looking for the ghosts of his friends, but no one was there.

"It'll save his life," Jack's voice snapped.

"What will save--" Daniel said.

"I will not allow it," Teal'c answered in a growl.

"Get out of the way, Teal'c," Jack said.

"He would not want this," Teal'c insisted. "Anything but this."

"I don't give a damn--he's _dying_!" Jack yelled. "He can't choose right now. I don't care if he hates all of us for it--"

"Lantash, you're too weak," Sam said, her voice strained almost to shaking. "And even if you could...would Daniel survive? Would you?"

And then Jacob's blended voice--not Selmak, because Selmak was dead, and now Daniel understood what had happened to Jacob and who was now blended with him. "I am doubtful that I could heal him completely," Lantash said through Jacob. "There will be much residual damage, but I believe he will live."

"And Dad?" Sam said desperately.

"Toxin's gone," Jacob said. "I'm willing. We both are."

"I. Will not. Allow it," Teal'c repeated.

"He would not wish this," Sha'uri spoke up. "Stop this, all of you."

"The symbiote can be removed after he has healed," Skaara spoke up, and Daniel thought, _no, not you, too_.

"That's right," Jack said. "That's right! Just temporary. They'll switch right back when he's better. Won't even have the protein to show for it."

"No," Janet's voice said. "You don't understand. There's too much damage for a Tok'ra to heal completely. He'll need constant care, constant therapy, and if it's provided by a symbiote..."

"It is likely that we would have to remain blended if we survive the procedure," Lantash said.

"Then you cannot," Sha'uri said. "If you are a true Tok'ra, you will not take an unwilling host."

"You would rather him dead?" Lantash retorted. Even after living on Earth for over a year, he shared the same blind spot as most Tok'ra--he didn't seem to understand how someone could be so violently against a blending that death would be preferable. "He cannot speak for himself--"

"But he has a living will," Janet said over the bickering voices. "And I will not defy--"

"Just give him a chance to say it himself!" Jack snapped. "If this works, he'll still get his choice, and we can deal with it then."

"No," Daniel said, horrified. "No, please, don't! I'm ready! Don't do it!"

Oma turned around.

"Oma? You're leaving?" Daniel asked her. "But you can't leave now--"

"The rest is up to you," Oma said.

"They're talking about implanting me," he said.

"Then your journey will continue as before," she said.

"I don't want it to," Daniel said, and he found that it was true. He had made his choice, like he had made so many choices to move on before that, and he would follow the path where it led him. "Not like that. Not anymore. I've decided."

"Walking the great path brings great responsibility," Oma warned. "You cannot fear it nor hesitate in your resolve."

"I understand," Daniel said, gritting his teeth when it felt as though his entire body were tingling. Were they moving him--preparing to implant him?

"Then stop them," she said.

...x...

"Jack," Daniel said.

Jack stiffened but didn't turn around--his eyes were fixed on Daniel's body, lying on the ground, Jacob standing beside him, half of the people trying to stop the transfer and half trying to stop the others from stopping it. There were more Abydons here now, drawn by the commotion, and if something didn't happen soon, they were going to start yelling again and fighting, and Daniel was so _tired_ of people fighting when they didn't have to, not them, not over _him_.

Daniel looked away from his own body, found Skaara, and grasped both his brother and Jack by the shoulder.

They resurfaced in the embarkation room at the SGC--empty but for themselves and Oma Desala, sitting quietly on the ramp. "Jack," Daniel repeated. "Skaara."

"Dan'yel," Skaara said in disbelief. "What..."

"Don't do this," Daniel said, looking at both of them.

"Daniel?" Jack said. He didn't even look confused. He wore a distant expression that meant he thought he was dreaming and he didn't much care, but he stared hard at Daniel all the same. "What's going on?"

"Let me go," Daniel said. The look in Jack's eyes sharpened until the look became wariness and stubbornness. "You wanted to give me a chance to speak for myself. So tell Jacob to stop. Leave Lantash where he is."

"Why?" Skaara said. "This Tok'ra can save your life."

"I don't want it," Daniel said.

"It's Lantash," Jack said. "You like each other. Mostly. It'll be okay. Carter's dad isn't as old as Martouf; he'll be fine, too."

"No," Daniel said. "I'm ready to move on."

Jack's face became angry for a moment, and then it disappeared into the emptiest expression he had. "You're just giving up?" he said, and Daniel understood, because Teal'c had taught him what war was and Sam had shared with him the love for learning that gave it all a purpose, but it was Jack who had taught him to fight, _always_, and _never_ to give up.

"I'm not giving up," Daniel said, looking between them both. "Believe me, it's not that." He glanced past them. Both of them turned around to see Oma on the ramp. "Oma Desala," he said, because they might not recognize her in this form. "The one who's been caring for Shifu."

"I remember," Jack said.

"Dan'yel..." Skaara said.

"I think I can do more this way," Daniel said, fixing his gaze on Jack. Jack would understand this--he _had_ to. "Please. Let me go. I don't want what they're about to do. You know that. For me--tell them to stop."

Jack stared at him a moment longer. Without looking away, he said, "Jacob, don't do it. It's what he wants."

Daniel turned. He saw nothing but Oma on the ramp and the Stargate shimmering behind him.

"_No, father_," Skaara said, and Daniel turned again to see his brother add a voice to something he couldn't see. "_It is what he wants_."

"Just let him go," Jack said.

Then they fell silent.

"Are...did they...?" Daniel said when a minute had passed. "I don't feel anything."

Skaara dropped his face into his hand. Jack looked at him and didn't speak.

"Time of death, 10:08," Janet's voice echoed softly from a distance.

_Now_, Oma's voice echoed in his mind, though the others didn't seem to hear it. _This is it_.

The realization was like a breath of air when he hadn't breathed in years. Daniel closed his eyes and saw--he was in the 'gate room on Earth, and he was in the desert in Abydos; he was here, clearheaded and real, and he was there, dead. His sight was clearer than it had ever been, and he thought he felt Oma's hand on his shoulder, pulling him away until he was high enough to see them all. This was the conversion, he realized--this was how Mother Nature manipulated the material world, and now she was making his physical form irrelevant.

Sam was staring right at him, wide-eyed and with an arm around her father's shoulders and Janet's face frozen in shock. Skaara stood with his arms out in front of all of their Abydonian brothers and sisters and their father, silent, watching. And Jack turned to him--

"Gonna miss you," Jack said.

Daniel took a look back at the ramp, where Oma was now standing in front of the wormhole, as if to say he had to leave. But if this was to be the last time, and if he could have one last act before leaving...he grabbed Jack's hand, and, before Jack could ask what he was doing, placed it in Skaara's.

His throat was too tight to speak, but Jack said, "We get it. 'Gate's always open."

"Don't feel bad," Daniel managed to say calmly. "Tell them that. And that I miss them."

A soft sound behind him told him Oma had disappeared through the wormhole. Daniel stared at the event horizon and took a breath, and then another, and walked up the ramp.

"Where are you going?" Skaara called before he could step through.

"We'll see you around?" Jack asked.

Daniel turned around and found that they were blurry in his vision. "I don't know," he said, and he accepted the fear that boiled in his gut at that, because encased within it was the excitement of finding a new world. He turned away for the last time and stepped through the Stargate.

...x...

"We've been waiting for you," Oma said on the other side. Daniel turned around, but the Stargate was gone. Below him was a crowd of his family, looking up, a few faces wet and the others dry with shock or numbness. His body was gone, and he was here, not dead, but _here_.

"I did it," Daniel said, not sure what to feel, or if he even could still feel anything. "I..."

And Oma held out her hand. "Come," she said. "It is time."

XXXXX

**_Two Days Ago  
Revanna; 1930 hrs_**

_"It's time, Daniel, now," Jacob snapped, and was shoved to his knees for his trouble._

_Already swaying on his knees himself and shivering with pain, Daniel only managed a sympathetic wince. "Jacob--"_

_Pain blossomed in his side as a foot knocked him into the grass. He bit back a moan and fought the urge to push himself upright until he could drag enough air into his lungs. Something was wrong with his chest, and the rest of him felt like it was on fire, but he couldn't worry about that now. That was for later._

_He didn't dare to move his hand, gripping the vial of symbiote poison. If he opened his fingers, just a little, Zipacna would see it. If he closed his fingers, just a little, Selmak would die, and Jacob with him. He'd been willing to do it with the System Lords and their hosts, and even with enemy Jaffa, but Jacob and Selmak?_

_Time was ticking. The longer they knelt here together under Zipacna's ship, the more chance that someone would discover what he was holding. If they lost the poison, they lost SG-1's chance of escape, _and_ the System Lords would have the Tok'ra's symbiote poison. They'd discover the formula from there._

_Jacob turned to him and insisted, "Can't both die."_

_One of them had to live. Zipacna and his Jaffa had to die for SG-1 to live, and someone had to warn the SGC that Anubis was alive and powerful and coming for Earth. If Daniel had the best chance, he had to take it. If he didn't, they were both dead, anyway._

_He started to shift his grip--_

_"What is this?" Zipacna said. "Jaffa!" Hands grabbed Daniel's arms and pulled him forward. Panicked, Daniel started to squeeze and break the vial--_

_He heard the sharp _crack_ of bone before his arm was overtaken by fiery agony, and he screamed._

_By the time he'd fought his way out of the haze of pain and caught his breath, staff weapons had snapped open all around him._

_"If you move again, you will be killed," Zipacna said, taking the poison from the Jaffa who had wrested the vial from Daniel's broken arm. If it weren't for the fact that Daniel didn't think he _could_ move, he might have been scared._

_"Daniel...dammit," Jacob whispered._

_"I'm sorry," Daniel managed. He coughed, wincing when the movement reverberated through his aching chest and down his limbs._

_Zipacna examined the vial and smirked. "Ah," he said. "So _this_ is the secret the Tok'ra have been hiding."_

_"I can save him," Selmak said suddenly. Another staff weapon snapped open, but Daniel turned and found the Tok'ra staring at him, his eyes glowing bright. "I can save Jacob."_

_In that moment, Daniel knew he was going to die. _

_If he did nothing, the System Lords would have the poison, Zipacna would kill them anyway, and then SG-1 would never make it back to safety. The only hope was to get the vial, crack it open, and let the poison kill the Jaffa before they killed him. He twitched his legs experimentally, and they both still seemed to be working--but if he moved, if he tried to reach the vial, he would be killed instantly, even if he _could_ grab it._

_And if Daniel was killed..._

_Selmak said he could save Jacob. That could only mean one thing for the symbiote--suicide--but Jacob would carry some or all of Selmak's memories, unhindered by the conflict Sam felt when trying to access Jolinar's knowledge, and Jacob would be alive to tell the SGC that Anubis was coming. Daniel could die killing Selmak if it meant one of them lived. That was what it meant. _

_He met Selmak's eyes and nodded._

_Without warning, Jacob choked. "No," he whispered, his eyes becoming panicked as he clutched his throat. "No!" Some of the staff weapons swung away from Daniel to him--_

_Daniel lunged to his feet and barely felt a staff blast crashing into him until he'd landed on top of Zipacna. Nothing moved the way it should--he couldn't take the time to figure out what was injured--but he saw the vial in Zipacna's hand, and he slammed himself against it--his hand, his knee, his head, his body, whatever part of him still worked._

_The last thing he saw before his eyes blurred was Zipacna's shocked expression. He heard cries from Jaffa dying around him, and Jacob was crawling toward one of the Jaffa, reaching for something, yelling for Jack. _

_Daniel closed his eyes. '_This is it,_' he thought. '_I'm done._'_

_

* * *

_Continued in Part II: Ascension_  
_


	2. Part II: Ascension, 1 of 4

**XXXXX**  
**Part II: Ascension**  
**XXXXX**

The debriefing was surprisingly short. Maybe it just seemed that way to Daniel, who parted ways with Oma after promising not to linger long, and then kept finding himself distracted by the flows of energy in the briefing room that he could actually _see_ if he thought about it. He didn't know how long he'd spent playing and drifting along the SGC corridors, following a speck of dust being carried through the vents, before he returned to see everyone leaving the briefing room.

Sam was sad, he could see. Daniel had just touched Jack's mind, and Teal'c had walled himself away so stiffly that he wasn't sure how to proceed, so he turned back to Sam instead.

Daniel found her asleep at Martouf's bedside, where an elderly man slowly blinked his eyes open and stared at her without recognition. When Jacob stepped close to the bed some time later, Daniel wasn't sure if he was there because Lantash wanted to see Martouf, or if Jacob wanted to comfort Sam or if he was hoping she would comfort him instead.

Jacob backed away eventually. "We'll come back after we find the rest of the Tok'ra," he said quietly, though it wasn't certain whether he was talking to Sam or to Lantash. He draped a blanket over Sam where she sat, and, in sleep, she clutched at it tightly.

When he left, Daniel sat down on the bed and experimentally touched her shoulder. He couldn't tell whether she'd felt it or not, because he didn't seem to have hands and didn't know what he was actually doing when he imagined himself sitting, but he thought she looked calmer. Maybe he was fooling himself.

He sighed as he slipped gently onto Abydos.

...x...

"God-killer," people were whispering.

"No," others countered. "Not just a god-killer; a god."

Daniel stood watching his brothers as they guarded the Stargate. The conversation was hushed, subdued, tentative, and everything he didn't associate with his homeland. "There are no gods," one scoffed. "How many times must you learn before you believe it? Only tyrants."

"But not him," Nabeh insisted. "He is no tyrant. You saw it yourself--he died and was reborn into light. He rose over us, went through the pyramid."

"He spoke to Skaara," someone else said.

"I heard nothing. He was not even awake."

"Not aloud; his spirit."

"Yes, it must have been. O'Neill, too. They changed their minds so quickly. He did something."

"God-killer," someone whispered again.

And then, Skaara's voice cut through and said, "His name was Dan'yel."

Conversation halted. The men looked up to see Skaara at the entrance to the pyramid. "Skaara," Tobay said, wary, gentle, like someone speaking to a wild animal and not to one of his closest brothers. "Of course. We know that."

"Then you can say it when you speak of my brother," Skaara snapped, angrily snatching up a gun and opening the chamber. "_Our_ brother, yi shay. You know he hates to be named in the stories. "

Instead, the men stopped talking at all.

"_Did_ hate," Skaara corrected himself quietly. He stared at the gun he was cleaning and oiling with the intensity of someone who knew everyone was either looking at him or studiously _not_ looking at him. His movements were harsh, too jerky, the way Daniel had seen him once after being freed from Klorel, when he had discovered that some of his best friends had died in the first fight against Apophis. The men knew it, too--they were nudging each other and asking with their eyes if someone should make him stop before he shot someone by accident.

"Skaara," Daniel said. "Calm down."

Skaara stopped.

Daniel perked up. "Can you hear me?" he said excitedly. "Can you..." He touched Skaara's hand where it lay still on the barrel of the gun. "I'm right here."

"Daniel."

He turned around, wondering if someone else had seen him, but it wasn't that. "Shifu!" Daniel said, recognizing his wise little brother. "It's you! Look--I think Skaara heard me--"

"Daniel," Shifu repeated, holding up a small hand as Skaara raised his head and looked around. "No. You cannot."

"What?" Daniel said. "Why?"

In answer, Shifu held out a hand. "Come with me."

...x...

Slipping from one place to another wasn't about moving fast, which Daniel had tried to do at first. He wasn't sure _how_ he moved if he was immaterial, but he simply _was_ somewhere and then somewhere else. Space wasn't the same when he could be so many places at once.

And sometimes, it was like he was everywhere, and it was _incredible_.

It wasn't until Daniel had gone to Earth that he'd realized how small Abydos and its population were in comparison to a planet like Earth. He had slowly come to the realization that even Earth was small, and then, one day, he'd sat in a Goa'uld death glider and stared at the Earth and understood that they were like _nothing_ compared to the rest of the universe. Now, he knew that, compared to everything here, their world, their galaxy, their universe, their whole _plane_ was tiny, barely even a speck from this height.

He couldn't see anything clear in that greater picture--though he could tell that, if he tried hard enough, it might resolve into meaning--and, for now, he turned away from the chaotic patterns in favor of more familiar ground.

He had just not-quite-died, he defended to himself when he felt cowardly for shying away. He was allowed some time to settle before branching out more than he already had.

"Are you okay?" he asked when Shifu finally brought them to some place that looked like Kheb. Daniel couldn't tell whether they were actually on Kheb, in whatever sense they could be on a physical planet, or if it was something drawn from Shifu's mind, or even Oma's.

Shifu folded his hands in front of himself. "Why do you ask this?" he said.

"I was...just wondering," Daniel said. "We never saw you again, and we...we worry. Your mother and I have been worried about you."

"I am well," Shifu said. "Daniel, has Oma not spoken to you of these things?"

"What things?" Daniel said.

"You cannot interfere in such a way as you did just then," Shifu told him seriously.

"I only said Skaara's name," Daniel said.

"Yes," Shifu said, nodding.

"But," Daniel said, confused. "But he was sad."

"And if he begins to believe that you are still present--if he spends his days hoping to see you again?" Shifu said. "He is mourning you. Let him mourn without fighting ghosts, too."

That made sense, Daniel thought reluctantly. He wondered whether he should care more that his brother was mourning him, but it was easier not to feel that when he wasn't standing on that plane and watching it unfold. His mind was clearer this way. And yet, even standing here... "I don't feel very enlightened," he said.

"This is not the end of your journey, my brother," Shifu said. "But you cannot reach enlightenment if you seek always to return."

Before he could ask where it was he was supposed to be--because surely he couldn't just stay here and _be_--another voice behind him said, "You need to go on."

Daniel turned and saw Oma Desala moving toward him. "On?" he repeated.

"You have reached a higher plane of existence," Oma explained. "It was your journey in life that brought you here, and it is your journey here that will lead you further. But you cannot go back. Learn to accept that, or you will remain still forever."

Acceptance. A necessary part of his job had been to accept new ways and cultures, but it could also be dangerous to accept without thinking. "I still don't understand any more than before," he said. "I don't know what I'm supposed to do."

"Perhaps you try too much," Shifu suggested. "From the moment I was born, brother, you have been trying to find something you could never find on your own."

"I was trying to keep you safe back then," Daniel said. "What else could I have done?"

"Nothing," Shifu said. "You did all you could do, and that is the good that Oma saw within you. Now, you must learn to see beyond the limits of the lower planes."

Daniel felt a flash of frustration. It was oddly comforting, as fleeting as the feeling was, even if he knew he was supposed to be trying to give up the things that had defined his mortal life. At least frustration was still a part of him.

Oma shook her head. "And did I not tell you to wait until I could explain to you?" she chided. "You disappeared as soon as I tried to find you."

"I wasn't hiding," Daniel said. When Oma didn't answer, he added, "Mostly. I had to see them. I had to check on them."

"And what would you have done to comfort them?" she said. Daniel opened his mouth to say he could do plenty, because it looked like he could make Skaara hear him--and Orlin had done it once with Sam, Shifu with Daniel and Sha'uri, and Oma with all of them--but before he could speak, she said, "You cannot interfere in their matters, Daniel."

"Why?" he said.

"Does the SGC meddle in the affairs of other cultures?" Oma said.

"Yes," Daniel said. "We don't try to, most of the time. But it happens anyway."

"And yet," she pointed out, "SGC makes an effort not to interfere with others' lives more than they have to."

That was true. And even so, more than a few thought the SGC did too much. "But I'm _from_ their culture this time," he said. "It's not interference if I'm one of them, is it?"

Oma sighed. "Listen to yourself, Daniel. You aren't one of them anymore. You're one of us. You must accept that and let them live their own lives."

"There is much to learn," Shifu added.

"Okay," Daniel sighed. "I'll try."

...x...

Nonetheless, he found himself standing on Earth again after leaving Shifu and Oma's Kheb.

General Hammond found Nyan in the archaeology office, in front of Daniel's desk. "Are you all right?" the general said.

Nyan's hand hovered over something on the desk but was pulled back before he actually touched anything. He shook his head. "I don't understand what happened," he said.

Daniel stepped around them toward Robert's old desk. It wasn't Robert's desk anymore--it was a place for people to put things when Daniel's inbox overflowed, and it served almost as a filing area, but Daniel always thought of it as Robert's. One of these work areas would have to be cleared soon--they wouldn't hold empty desks in an empty office for dead men. He hoped that whoever was assigned to his desk was warned to stay out of Jack's way.

"I'm not sure any of us really understands it," the general was saying.

"Is Martouf going to die?" Nyan said. The two of them hadn't been close, exactly, but all the aliens on base shared an awareness that they were _others_, and that they had at least a little bit in common that the Tau'ri couldn't understand even if they tried.

General Hammond pursed his lips, perhaps looking for a tactful way to say 'yes.' "Eventually," he finally said.

"Sooner rather than later?"

"We've never seen quite this case before," the general said. "Martouf is an old man by human standards. But he was in near-perfect health before Lantash left his body, and he's getting excellent care."

"His mind--"

"He's very old, son," the general said, rather than explain that Martouf didn't recognize much of anything when he was occasionally awake.

Nyan seemed to understand not to push further. "And Daniel's really dead?"

"Not exactly."

"Then..."

"We don't know if he can come back," the general said patiently. "But he's in a better place."

"Really?" Nyan asked.

General Hammond nodded firmly. Daniel couldn't tell if he believed that, but the affirmation was for Nyan, anyway, not for himself. "I'm sure of it. And I think the last thing he would want is to have everyone unhappy, including you, Nyan."

Daniel almost agreed aloud, just to let _someone_ hear, but he remembered Oma's words and decided to stay silent. Maybe she would leave him to his own devices longer if he was quiet.

Well, that wasn't what she had meant--listening to advice did not mean avoiding the advice-giver or staying quiet to stay unnoticed--but it was the way Daniel knew best after years of evading complete disobedience rather than truly obeying orders. Jack was the only commander who had understood that fully, and if he had been annoyed by it, he had come to value it, too. Daniel had the feeling it would take longer for Oma Desala to become accustomed to him.

And so, he decided again, the best way was to stay quiet and out of sight.

...x...

Sometimes, though, he couldn't really help it.

Jack was in Daniel's room in their house, methodically packing the books Daniel had accumulated over the years into boxes.

There were photographs on the bookshelf. In the most recent, Sam was scowling at Daniel while he grinned and held her laptop out of reach. In another, Teal'c held two fingers behind Jack's head like ears while Sam tried so hard not to laugh that her face was pink. And then there was an old one from when Daniel had been smaller and a little scared, swimming in a borrowed sweater from Jack and borrowed BDU trousers from base that were held up with a borrowed belt from Sam--Jack stood behind him with Sam and Teal'c on either side in front of a table of dirty dishes from dinner, Sam's arm out of frame as she held the camera out.

As Daniel watched now, Jack picked up the last one and started to put it into the box. Then he stopped and put it back. He started to turn away, then made a face and pushed it over sharply so it fell face-down on the empty bookshelf. He picked it up quickly, as if to check that the glass wasn't broken, then replaced it and turned the other two photos face-down, too, more carefully.

He walked swiftly out of the room, leaving the last box half-empty and still open. Daniel watched the door swing shut and knew Jack wouldn't be coming into this room often. Some people sought the past to reconcile the present; Jack pushed past aside to survive the future.

When Daniel followed him, he was sitting on the roof, nursing a bottle of beer and ignoring the telescope next to him in favor of looking up blankly at the sky. They had sat here together before, sometimes just to relax while Jack played with his telescope and Daniel read a book. Other times, they had come here seeking silence after a friend's wake or a failed mission or, in the early days, a particularly bad nightmare.

Daniel looked over his shoulder, though he knew he might not see any Ascended beings who might be keeping an eye on him. Still...

Jack set his bottle down on the railing. He started to sit back, but Daniel pushed the telescope, very slightly, so that it swung gently in one direction--against the wind--before reversing and landing in Jack's hand.

Freezing where he was, Jack stared at the telescope but didn't move his hand away. "Don't screw with me," he whispered, his fingers curling lightly around the telescope.

Daniel tapped the telescope once more, and then stood aside.

With an exhalation that was less laughter than grief, Jack shook his head and picked the bottle back up. This time, before he raised it to his lips, he tilted it once in salute. Daniel sat with him for the rest of the night and looked up at the stars.

...x...

Teal'c wasn't in _kelno'reem_.

"Here you are," Sam said when she found him in the gym.

"Major Carter," Teal'c greeted, not looking up from the barbell he was hefting. Daniel knew it was too heavy--no one else would notice the Jaffa lifting more than he strictly should, except maybe Jack or Janet, who kept track, but Daniel had spent enough time in this room with his friend to know Teal'c was pushing just a little too hard. "How is Martouf?"

She shrugged uncomfortably. "Same as before. We've been able to keep him alive--if another Tok'ra symbiote needs a host, it might be able to reverse the increased aging. We don't really know if or how that happens, though, so it might be permanent."

The chances that a Tok'ra symbiote even _wanted_ to blend with a host as damaged as Martouf were low, anyway. She didn't say it, but Daniel was sure Teal'c heard it nonetheless.

"And your father?" Teal'c said.

"Going back to the Tok'ra," she said. "Trying to figure out what's going on, where they resettled, all of that. He'll come back and let us as soon as they know more. He's, uh...been a little testy, though, so...just so you know the next time he comes around."

That wasn't surprising--Martouf had been the cooler head while Lantash had offered passion, and Selmak's wry composure had kept Jacob's crankier tendencies in check. "They are in mourning," Teal'c said as an explanation.

Sam seemed uncertain for a moment. Then, as if she couldn't hold it in any longer, she said, her tone almost belligerent, "What about you?"

"Of what do you speak, Major Carter?" Teal'c answered.

She gestured to him, at the perfectly normal sight of the Jaffa exercising. "You just lost someone, too. I thought there was a three-day mourning ritual for Jaffa on Chulak."

Daniel winced when Teal'c set a barbell back on the pins a little harder than necessary. "We are not on Chulak," Teal'c said evenly, sitting up, "and Daniel Jackson is not dead."

Sam shook her head angrily and began to walk out. Before she could, though, she turned back around. "So that's it?" she said. "No memorial, no body left, so we pretend it never happened? We're not allowed to..."

She stopped, but of all of them, Sam had always been the worst at hiding her thoughts when the look in her eyes screamed what she was thinking.

It was late in the evening, and there weren't many people in the gym. The few who were, however, glanced her way and then away again. She must have noticed, too, and she turned around and walked stiffly out of the gym without another word. It was a long time before Teal'c moved from where he sat. No one bothered either of them.

...x...

"Colonel," Sam said, jogging down the corridor to catch up to Jack. "Colonel O'Neill!"

Jack glanced back at her, so disinterested that anyone who knew him knew that all was not well but that he would pretend otherwise. "Major Carter."

"Could I have a word, sir?"

"Nope," he said, "unless it's about the asteroid heading toward Earth."

Daniel frowned and looked up toward the ceiling, only to berate himself for forgetting yet again that he wasn't _really_ standing here on Earth and bound by the restrictions of being on Earth. By the time he'd decided he should find out what was happening, Sam was saying, "What? Asteroid?"

With a nod, Jack said, "Yep. Breaktime's over."

She stopped walking, looking lost. "But...we just lost Daniel, and..."

...and Martouf and Selmak, and her father was quieter than ever and Lantash apparently vacillating between trying to adapt to his new host and trying not to blame his new host for needing him to leave his old one. No one else had been as close as Sam to all of them, and no one else wanted to admit anything was wrong.

"We lose people all the time, Major," Jack said. "We move on. We've got a mission now."

"Jack," Daniel sighed, reproachful, as Sam's jaw dropped in disbelief.

"He wasn't just anyone, sir!" Sam said. "Couldn't we...isn't there--"

Jack stopped and turned to look at her. "We've got a mission," he repeated, his voice hard. "There's an asteroid heading for our fair planet that might kill us all, and I need _you_ to figure out how to stop it."

For a moment, Daniel thought she was going to retort or even pull him physically to a halt. Instead, she fell silent, her fists clenched at her sides, and followed Jack to the briefing room. Duty came first for Sam, always, even when she hated it.

Daniel slipped away from the post he'd taken up here and looked with a sight he hadn't yet mastered, one that slid and shifted past him in a dizzying whirl of faces and colors and sounds that made less sense, rather than more, simply because there was so much. Taking a deep breath (even that was a construct of his mind, he reminded himself--no form, no lungs, no breath), Daniel focused on what his mind insisted was upward.

"Daniel," Oma said from behind him. He winced. "Look at me," she continued sternly, and waited until he'd obeyed. "If you can't control yourself and _listen_, the Others make you do so in a less gentle way."

"What did I do?" Daniel protested. "I didn't do anything this time. I'm just looking. Look--I can't even--I don't even know what I'm looking at."

She regarded him solemnly, and he wondered if it was a mark of how badly he was doing that even an enlightened being seemed a little annoyed at him.

"Is this wrong?" Daniel said. "Oma--"

"Don't tell me that you don't understand," she interrupted. "I've told you already, and you insist on disobeying."

"You've told me what _not_ to do," he retorted, "which, by the way, I haven't done--I'm looking and _not_ touching. But I still don't have anything _to_ do. I mean..." He forced himself to back away, until he could see the lower planes, but was immediately confused again by the overload of thoughts and information and had to shake himself out of it.

"You've been on our plane for a very short time," Oma said. "It's only been a few days for them, and, therefore, for you. Give it time."

"Can you show me?" Daniel said. "I was going to see what this asteroid was that they were talking about--I won't do anything," he promised when she began to frown again. "But I have to _see_, at least. There's no harm in knowing."

Oma seemed torn between the hope that he was trying to adapt to this existence and suspicion of his motives. "All right," she said, and held out a piece of paper.

Confused, Daniel accepted it. "This...is a joke, right?" he said once he'd glanced at it. "Ascended beings get their information by _memo_?"

She shrugged. "This is your mind, not mine," she pointed out. "You were the one who wanted to know. I'd read it if I were you--it does one no good to ignore one's memos."

Oma Desala, as it turned out, had a very odd sense of humor.

He looked at his memo, which was written on paper bearing a letterhead that looked a lot like the very-familiar Department of Defense ones, until he looked closer and saw:

DEPARTMENT OF ENLIGHTENMENT  
DUTIES EDUCATION AND TRAINING  
Higher Plane, Universe

"Very funny," Daniel said.

"I thought so," she agreed.

...x...

"We have to do something," Daniel said once he understood what was happening.

"Daniel," Oma sighed. "How many times will I have to tell you?"

He imagined the asteroid moving toward Earth, SG-1 sailing toward it in a half-repaired _teltak_. "But the System Lords cheated. You saw it--they're cheating and trying to fool the Asgard and break the treaty, and over six _billion_ people are going to die! SG-1 doesn't even know what they're dealing with."

"If they cheat, does that make it right for you to do the same?" she asked.

"But why would it be cheating?"

"There are rules," she said.

"Well, they're stupid rules," Daniel said.

"Should've asked to see the contract before you signed up," Oma said.

Daniel blinked, thinking that that expression in itself was proof that he wasn't the only one who snooped around the lower plane. "I was busy dying at the time," he said, feeling sullen and a bit apprehensive about what else he might have missed in his haste.

She was unmoved. "That's how it goes. Can't change it now."

"So...so we just stand around but can't do anything," Daniel clarified. "Is that it?"

Oma folded her arms and gave him a severe look. "You're making this difficult on purpose," she said. "I used to think Jack O'Neill got so infuriated with you because he was being stubborn. Now I'm starting to understand how he felt."

"Did I...just get insulted by Mother Nature?" Daniel said, thinking that Jack would have been impressed. "What do we _do_, then, other than contemplating our navels?"

"You don't have a navel anymore," she told him. "If you'd slow down and listen for once, maybe you'd stop leaping to wrong conclusions. You of all people should know that nothing is that straightforward." Daniel looked back, as if he could see the naquadah-loaded asteroid careening toward Earth. "Don't you trust your friends?"

"Well, yes," he said, turning back to her. "But they're...not in the best state of mind right now." And that was true, but in fact, he thought Sam probably worked more efficiently in times like this, when she had a problem to stop her from thinking about worse things. Jack would just be sharper than normal and Teal'c quieter; they weren't in the best frame of mind, but it didn't mean they weren't functioning. Still... "They don't know--"

"How many times have you and they stumbled on something that was previously unknown?" she asked rhetorically. "And how many times have you succeeded nonetheless? _Trust_ them, Daniel. It's their world now, not yours, and it's up to them to stop it."

Daniel sighed. "Okay. Fine. Maybe you're right. So it's, what, against the rules to do anything to help them using the advantages I have from being on this plane?"

"_Exactly_," she said intently. "Yes, Daniel."

Surprised at the emphasis in her answer, Daniel stopped and thought about what he'd said, and how that was different from what he'd asked before. "Using...the advantages I have now," he repeated, and Oma smiled very slightly. "_Oh_. So..." He paused again. "But I can't..._not_ be like this. Everything I do would be done as an Ascended person."

"Listen carefully," Oma said, for perhaps the twentieth time since he had Ascended. For perhaps the first time, Daniel shut up and listened carefully. "I didn't make you Ascend."

"Yes you did," Daniel said.

Oma gave him a look.

"I mean...go on," he said.

"You Ascended," she continued. "_You_. Anyone with the will could have done it."

"Not without knowing it was possible," Daniel said. "I wouldn't have known that without you."

"And if I had been alive on the lower plane at the time," Oma said, "I could still have told you all of that. Teaching about Ascension isn't something that one must be Ascended to do."

"So you weren't breaking the rules by doing that," he said, "because you weren't using any...specially enlightened powers to do it."

She tilted her head. "You're starting to get the idea."

Daniel turned to the side and found another note on his desk, reading, _'_Teltak_ from Revanna was successfully repaired. SG-1 has launched to intercept asteroid. ETA: seven days. Asteroid is expected to collide with Earth in approximately nine days.'_ Below that was a summary of how and where and when and who, along with the chances of success.

When Daniel looked up, Oma was still watching him. "Daniel," she said, more gently, "it's hard for everyone to accept this at first, but you are no longer part of life as you know it."

"I know that," he said, but he couldn't help a feeling of dejection even as he said it.

"You cherished your life deeply," she said, "even in your darkest moments. You knew every time what the chances were of dying, but it still feels unfair to have lost your life so young."

Daniel swallowed. "I don't regret what I did," he said.

"But you haven't accepted it yet," she said.

"I have," he said, not even sure whether or not he was lying this time.

"It's all right. It takes time--Ascension is a journey, not a single step. Sooner or later, you'll learn to accept this existence and everything it entails. The more you resist, the harder that journey will be."

"I'm not resisting."

"You are," she said. "And now you're lying to yourself."

He didn't answer.

Oma placed a hand on his shoulder. "I know it's confusing. Perhaps it will help to think in terms of what your choices _are_--what paths you have to choose from. Right now, you can linger and watch your friends in their cargo ship...or you can trust them to do their job and come with me to learn what it is you can do as you are now. There are so many wonders you haven't seen."

Daniel bit his lip and looked down at the desk again. The memo was unchanged. There were more spread around--like an inbox overflowing with things he wanted to read about things going on all throughout the SGC and the rest of the galaxy.

Resisting the urge to reach for one of them, to focus again on what he would have done in life, Daniel turned away. "Okay," he said to Oma. "Teach me."

She smiled. "Come with me."

XXXXX

It wasn't exactly a surprise that stores of knowledge manifested in Daniel's world as an odd mix of the SGC base library and an Abydonian cavern, one of the ones used for the few rebels who had dared to pass on literacy and knowledge during the Goa'uld's reign.

But it was comforting--all the most familiar places to him, filled with books and scrolls and tablets, and he had quite literally all the time in the universe to peruse them. While Oma seemed to spend most of her time on Kheb, either waiting for people seeking enlightenment or simply meditating by herself, Daniel made his library his own safe haven among the strangeness of the higher planes.

Some of the books he found were on concrete topics, the kinds of things he might have read in a physical library, like histories of cultures that the Others had watched over and helped to flourish. Languages, stories, myths, histories, literature...

Most of it, though, wasn't in words at all, at least nothing he could easily grasp, and it was that part that Daniel found most intriguing and most maddening all at once.

"Why does it have to follow this cycle?" he asked Oma one day when she came to see him. "What you teach your people says that something has to go wrong before we can try to make something good happen."

"You're oversimplifying it because you're frustrated with your limitations," she answered.

Daniel sighed. "I guess so," he conceded.

"Nature keeps itself in balance all on its own," she said. "It doesn't need--or want--interference. Occasionally, of course, something will happen. It's usually a coincidental combination of more things at once than anyone on the lower planes can perceive, but we need to give a little nudge then to restore the balance."

"What, like...like a world being destroyed?" he said, not quite able to stop thinking about the asteroid nearing Earth. "Would _that_ warrant interference?"

She gave him a pointed look. "Do you remember the Vorash system? If the Others interfered in matters as small as the destruction of a world--or even a solar system--your team might be dead now and Apophis might be alive. You cannot have it both ways, and we cannot change events to suit only one view, or one planet or one race. Perhaps you should be glad we _didn't_ decide to reset certain balances."

Chastened, Daniel looked away and tried to think of what was larger than that. Maybe it would take...the destruction of a galaxy, or a reality, or a plane. That was the point, though, he supposed--they thought in small terms on the lower planes in comparison to what the Others could do. "Well, how does this nudging work, then?" he asked.

With a smile, she said, "You're not ready yet."

"What, the Others don't trust me in matters of cosmic coincidence?'

"No, they don't," she said. "It's not that simple. It's the very nature of _nature_: when you perturb it, it perturbs you back, and you're lucky if it doesn't upset something even worse in the process. As it is, the entire collective of Others must decide together when and how to nudge anything at all."

"But there has to be _something_ we can do," Daniel said. "We have all this power, Oma--"

"I seem to remember," Oma said, "a certain dream you shared with Shifu's biological mother--a dream that showed you just how dangerous it would be to have too much power and to deem yourself suitable to decide how to use it. I've watched you, Daniel--I know you took his lesson to heart at the time. Has that changed now?"

"No, of course not," Daniel said, "but...but as long as we know something is happening, choosing _not_ to do anything is just as much a decision as choosing _to_ do something. If you know about something, then inaction is no better and no worse than action; it just takes less effort."

She stared at him for a moment, then tilted her head. "You could say that," she said.

"I _am_ saying that," he said.

"Then you need to be aware that not everyone would agree with you."

"These 'Others' you've mentioned before?" Daniel said.

"Yes," she said. "Other Ascended beings."

"So...if I did something..._if!_" he added when she began to look wary again. "Hypothetically. _If_ I broke the rules and tried to continue being good instead of evil and actually _did_ something"--she folded her arms--"the Others would stop me? Or punish me?"

Oma nodded once. "Don't give me that look," she said.

"I'm not giving you any--"

"It's not cowardice," she said. "It's not negligence or sloth. It's responsibility."

One of the countless memos spread on the next desk said that a devastating religious war had broken out on a planet--far from Earth, not even in the same galaxy--between peoples advanced even beyond the Asgard. Nuclear weapons like those known on Earth were child's play to those people--civil war could easily destroy all life there. Pointing, Daniel said, "Letting hundreds--maybe thousands of people die when we could save them is being _responsible_?"

"Fine," she said, crossing her arms. "Let's play. We could stop that particular war somehow--we could find some way to protect the people on the losing side so they won't be exterminated. Let's say we do that. We save those eight and a half million people--"

"Eight _million_?" Daniel repeated numbly. He hadn't realized there were _that_ many at risk. He looked again at the desk, and suddenly it was filled with notes about plagues and wars breaking out on a hundred planets in a hundred galaxies.

"And now," she went on, "the tide of the war has turned. Which side did we pick, again? Why did we pick them? Because we liked them? Because they were losing?"

"Oma, come on--now _you're_ simplifying it for the--"

"To be honest, that part's not important right now," she interrupted. "We saved their lives, full stop. We stopped their petty little war. It really _is_ petty, isn't it, fighting over whether or not a voice from above told them to fight."

"I didn't say it was petty--"

"And yet you don't think they have the right to fight in the name of their god," she said. "You, who have spent years fighting a war about gods. So if we just add another voice...there's nothing wrong with that, is there? Just another voice for them to fight over."

"I don't accept that there's no hope for them," Daniel said. "People aren't always doomed to repeat their own history to their own detriment."

"You don't even know who they are."

"It shouldn't matter! They deserve to live--"

"And if we help them _keep_ living," Oma said, "and they kill someone else?"

"You can't damn an entire people because you think they couldn't live up to your moral standards," Daniel said. "People have to be given a chance."

Oma shrugged. "All right. Say we step in, and there's peace throughout the land. What shall we do next? Maybe...stop an artificial supernova that would destroy all life in a solar system?"

Since Daniel had been with SG-1 the time that they'd created their own artificial supernova and wiped out the Vorash system, and since Oma clearly knew about that incident, he said, "We were trying to kill Apophis, and we made sure the system was uninhabited first."

"Ah," she said, nodding. "Because the Jaffa killed in the explosion didn't deserve the second chance that, just a minute ago, you were so willing to give to a people you have never met before? Or because the non-human life on those planets didn't deserve to continue living? I would have thought that distance from your human form would allow you to see more objectively."

The thoughts churned uneasily in his mind, but Daniel shook his head. "I don't regret my part in that."

"And if I had been like you," Oma countered, "I wouldn't have regretted _stopping_ you then, to save the lives of thousands of Jaffa and to preserve dozens of species of life that were wiped out--forever--in that blast. Your friend Teal'c has a wife and a son. How many Jaffa lost a father or a husband in that battle? Surely that would be a worthy reason for us to interfere?"

"That's not..." Daniel started, but it wasn't like it wasn't true.

"You should be grateful, Daniel Jackson, that we do not always deem it right to stop the atrocities that mortals commit."

Daniel stared at her, not sure how much of this was what she really thought and how much was for the sake of argument, to drive in a point. "But if you did step in," he said, "those atrocities wouldn't have to happen in the first place. If someone had stopped Apophis from killing people to begin with, there would have been no supernova. You could make things better."

"Better for whom?" Oma said. "When did you forget that nothing is entirely black or white?"

"So...you're saying we shouldn't have destroyed Apophis and his fleet?"

"Not at all," she said. "It was a dispute among the people living on that plane, to be solved by people living _on that plane_. You and your people did what you thought was right in defense of yourselves and your ideals. The Others and I didn't have the right to judge. Daniel, you're not even the same species as they are anymore, not in any practical sense. In life, would you have stopped a jackal from killing and eating a hare simply because it was a violent act?"

Daniel wished that made less sense. "No," he said. "But. That's nature."

She pointed. Daniel followed her finger and flinched as a squadron of men on Earth was killed by enemy soldiers. She turned his gaze, and he saw a crowd of people on Juna, dancing, laughing. "So is all of that," she said. "Everything in nature is _part_ of nature. Even what mortal beings call artificial technology is simply their slow discovery of the natural rules that we know so well. Who are you to decide you know what is best for them?"

"But," he said, recognizing the arrogance in his line of thinking but unwilling to let go of it completely.

"Think about it," she advised.

...x...

Daniel thought about it.

And then he sought out Oma again and said, "Something's still missing. There's something you're not telling me."

"What might that be?" she said.

"Kheb," Daniel said. "What you did on Kheb couldn't possibly be considered something a human could have done without being Ascended, and you killed about a thousand Jaffa that day."

"I think it was more, actually," Oma said. She folded her arms, raising her eyebrows.

"Well...and then, there was all that..._stuff_," Daniel said, waving his arms inarticulately. "You made me think I could light candles with my mind and move things without touching them. Even _you_ can't claim that was anything but an Ascended being's manipulation of a mortal to--"

"To what?" she said. "To guide your thoughts toward the conclusion you were already seeking in the absence of a voice you could hear?"

"Oh, come on," he scoffed. "You've talked to me on other occasions without all the subterfuge."

"Yes, I have," she said. "In your mind. When you were three-quarters dead and not even conscious anymore."

Daniel paused. "Okay," he conceded. "Bad example. But Shifu and Orlin have talked to people directly. You even had a disciple at Kheb. You could have talked to me through him."

"I did," she said.

"You tricked me! You made me think I was...powerful enough to protect Shifu."

"You tricked yourself," she retorted. "Don't blame me because you saw what you wanted to see instead of what I was trying to tell you. I didn't force you to do anything; you acted by yourself."

Daniel didn't think Ascended people were supposed to get as frustrated as he felt now.

"Fine, then," he said. "But what about the lightning you used to kill those Jaffa chasing us?"

"Ah, well," Oma said. "You're right about that one, I admit."

"It's not exactly something a human could do just by thinking," Daniel said. "So?"

She took the book he had been reading and carefully replaced it on a bookshelf. "There's a lot about me that you don't know, Daniel," she said, perusing the shelf of things he hadn't read.

"You...have the authority to do things like interfering?" Daniel guessed.

Unexpectedly, she laughed, a soft, short sound. "Not at all."

"Then _what_?"

"What do you know about Kheb?" she asked. "I don't mean the myth of Setesh hunting Harsesis or the myth of Isis hiding her son Harsesis there. What do you know about the history of the place--the actual planet?"

"I know..." Daniel started, then admitted, "Nothing, really--just old human and Jaffa legends."

Oma gave him another tight smile and pulled a book down for him. "Here's a hint," she said.

...x...

Daniel read the book until he grew frustrated with it. There was a straightforward history in there, stretching back far before Osiris had ever sought Kheb as a refuge from Setesh. He read about Kheb's creation by the Ancients--whoever they were--and the subsequent abandonment of the planet for its lack of material resources, long before the first Jaffa had even been engineered. Still, especially here, a straightforward history was never the whole story, and no matter where he looked, it felt like there was always something missing.

Halfway through, he stopped for a break and turned to look back down on the SGC.

Sam, Jack, and Teal'c had saved Earth from the asteroid.

Perhaps he shouldn't have worried--there wasn't much he could have helped with, anyway. Teal'c had noticed that their _teltak_ wasn't landing properly, Sam had found that their estimates of the rock's density had been terribly wrong, and then they'd discovered the naquadah core hidden within. From there, it had simply been a matter of figuring out how to prevent the collision itself, but Daniel wouldn't have worried about that. They were SG-1. It was what they did.

It was easy enough to check and see for certain that that was Anubis's first attempted attack on Earth. The soon-to-be System Lord was testing the SGC and the Asgard.

Another memo below that said that SG-1 was resisting all attempts to find a fourth member.

Daniel remembered how hard it had been to convince them to take a translator with them before he had joined. The four of them had needed time to figure each other out, but finally, they had _fit_. Popular belief at the SGC was that the original three-man SG-1 had been saving a place for Daniel, training him to be their perfect fourth, and while it hadn't been a conscious decision, sometimes Daniel thought they had been waiting to complete each other, too.

Nyan volunteered to be next on the list. His skill set overlapped with Daniel's, and SG-1 owed him their lives--maybe he realized that that might give him an edge over other officers who were turned down for the position. Daniel hoped Jack wasn't still yelling at people for not being able to predict his thoughts, because Nyan wasn't the type to yell back and would be more hurt by the hostility than Daniel would have been.

"You were going to school," Daniel said to Nyan, watching the Bedrosian struggle through too much work as he tried to pick up as much of Daniel's slack as he could while training to fit the physical requirements of being a member of SG-1. "You already sent in your applications. You don't have to do this."

"Are you talking to lowers again?" Oma said.

Daniel sighed and turned around. "Would it do any good to ask you to stop sneaking up on me?"

"Are you?" she pressed.

"No," he said, gesturing to Nyan, who clearly didn't hear. "See? Just...talking to myself."

Oma watched for a moment, and then nodded. "All right," she said.

"You know," Daniel said, curious, "I always thought you were sort of...omniscient. You can know everything that's happening. You can see anything. Right?"

"I can see where people are anytime I choose to see," she said. "But it doesn't mean that I know why, or that I'll be able to predict what they'll do, unless I have enough familiarity with them. I can know, but it doesn't mean I understand."

"Wow--I think I'm getting better at understanding the things you say," he said.

She raised her eyebrows. "Don't flatter yourself; it was an easy one. Besides," she added, her tone shifting subtly, just enough to catch his attention, "it's a big universe, and that's just one of the many planes. I can't be everywhere at once."

"Even you, huh," he said.

"Nor can the Others. We can't see everything at any given time."

Daniel frowned, wondering if there was some message in that. "Are you saying--"

"So?" she interrupted, glancing at the book on Kheb. "Do you understand yet why I was able to kill the Jaffa on Kheb?"

"Um..." he said.

"Keep looking," she said. "Figure that out, and you'll get a little closer to understanding the Others' rules."


	3. Part II: Ascension, 2 of 4

**Part II (cont'd)**

"You were exiled," Daniel said when he'd finally figured it out.

"Ah-ha," Oma said.

"You weren't on Kheb because you chose it--the Others _exiled_ you to a planet where they thought you'd find the least life to interfere with. They give you as little opportunity as possible to do anything, but then they turn away and you have practically free rein there."

They were on Oma's turf this time: her temple at Kheb. When Daniel concentrated, for the first time, he could see glimpses of light--barely visible, and gone as soon as he tried to look at them. Other Ascended beings, but not _the Others_ of whom Oma spoke with such warning. Her students, maybe--her allies.

So did that make the Others Oma's enemies? And did that make him _their_ enemy?

"I'd just started to understand Tau'ri politics," Daniel commented. "I didn't expect to find factions among Ascended beings. And this time, I'm not even sure who the enemies are."

"No, not enemies," Oma said, looking contemplatively into her pond. She sat, folding her legs under herself and smoothing the folds on her white robe as if searching for the best way to answer. "Neither we nor the Others are one body with one mind. No two Ascended beings are in complete agreement about what our purpose is and what our role is on the lower planes."

Still, he noticed, she said '_we_' and _'the Others_.' There _were_ factions here, and while she said they weren't enemies, he had had enough experience with politics that he doubted the groups were entirely friendly, either.

Daniel sat down next to her by the water's edge, noting with interest that, in Oma's domain, he wore the simple, pure-white garb of her students--she saw him as one of hers. While part of him couldn't help feeling some apprehension, because he didn't know all that entailed, it was comforting, too, to have a patron while he was still trying to understand this new existence.

"And you disagreed with the Others on something," he said. "Yes? Some rule, or some incident."

She was filling a thin vase with water from the pond and didn't answer for several moments. Only when she had replaced a wilting willow branch in the vase and set it down did she say, "Yes, Daniel. But it is less simple than that. I do not oppose the Others' essential philosophy; it is in the details that disagreements arise."

"Same ideals but different methods?"

"In a manner of speaking," she said.

Sighing, Daniel said, "Could you be a little _more_ vague?"

Oma turned to face him and looked positively wicked.

"No, uh, I was being sarcastic," he said quickly.

For a moment, he thought she was going to laugh in actual amusement, but she settled on a fond smile. As much as she tried his patience--and as much as he surely tried hers back--he took it as a victory that he could make her almost-laugh even while she was being particularly serene.

Not for the first time, he wondered why Oma had decided to help him to Ascension: some logic? Coincidence? A measure of affection for Daniel himself?

He opened his mouth to speak but faltered when Oma suddenly closed her eyes, grimacing as if in pain. "Um...Oma?" he said, worried, not sure whether (or how) one could be hurt while Ascended.

But she only shook her head and gave him a feeble smile without meeting his eyes. "There was a Jaffa I have been watching," she said. "Steadfast in her quest to find Kheb. And near death."

_Oh_, Daniel thought. "You offered to help her Ascend," he said.

"Her doubt was too strong," Oma said sadly. "Not doubt in herself, like you felt, like so many people feel; in the end, she could not believe strongly enough in this path. The greatest violence the Goa'uld do is not to the body, but to the soul."

"Was...was she--"

"No one you knew, Daniel," she said. "Just a very brave Jaffa."

He looked down at the lake in shame, because that _was_ what he had been thinking, but it shouldn't matter at all that he hadn't known her. Oma hadn't known her, either, but felt the pain of her passing nonetheless. "You're a better person than I am, Oma," he confessed.

Oma gave him an odd look. "I wouldn't be so sure," she said. "I do what I can. So have you done."

"So..._this_ is what you do," Daniel said. "You show people the path to Ascension. You were at Kheb--that's why the Jaffa believe they can find enlightenment there. _You_ are the basis of the ancient Jaffa beliefs."

"Not all their beliefs," she said. "But that particular one in that particular form...yes. Their minds fill in the rest, as with any religion."

"You started to do it with me. And you prepared Shifu for it, and..." He looked around again. "There are other people here. They're all ones you've Ascended?"

"They are ones...to whom I have shown the path," she said carefully. "Ascension happens neither without consent nor without will."

"Meaning that it's supposed to be an intransitive verb, not a transitive one," Daniel said. "You didn't Ascend these people; they Ascended with your help."

She glanced at him. "I suppose you could say that. I encouraged them, nothing more."

"You're pretty defensive about it," Daniel commented, thinking that he understood now. Oma only gave him a sideways look. "That's the rule you're breaking, isn't it? You're not supposed to help people Ascend at all. You do it anyway--you go far enough for the Others to disapprove, but not far enough for them to stop you outright."

"It is considered a very important rule," she said in confirmation. "To some, it is the most important rule of all."

"Oh," Daniel said.

"Yes--'oh,'" Oma said.

"But you do it anyway," he said.

She nodded. "I have to do what I can," she repeated.

"But the Others don't like it."

"No."

"It's a stupid rule," he said.

"It's in place for a reason," she told him. "You cannot always choose which rules you do and do not follow."

He stood up. "I have to think about this," he said. "Maybe I'll understand better if I know more about the history and...and the context in which Ascended beings do or don't act."

Oma gave him a smile. "And to think I tried so hard at first to make you simply contemplate. I should have started with the room full of books."

The only thing Daniel could think in response was that Jack would have known better than to try to give him an order to shut up and expect it to be obeyed so easily. Sam would have known to start with the books--she'd known that instinctively when they'd first met. Teal'c would have known that nothing quieted Daniel better than hearing something that warranted further thinking. Oma could see his soul and still didn't know _him_ as well as a handful of mortals did.

That wasn't fair, though. He had been thinking that SG-1 would be unreasonable in looking for his replacement, but Daniel was still looking for his friends, too, in the moments when he didn't stop the thought in time.

XXXXX

Jacob returned to Earth just after Teal'c exposed the rebel Jaffa leader, Kytano, as the minor Goa'uld Imhotep. Daniel stood in the infirmary until he could be sure that Teal'c would recover without permanent injury, then trailed behind the others into the briefing room.

"We found the remaining Tok'ra reassembling on one of our secondary bases," Jacob said. "A high-ranking operative, Malek, has taken command. Selmak left as much of his memories with me as he could--fortunately, that includes access codes and 'gate addresses."

"We're glad to hear that," General Hammond said.

Jacob dipped his head. In a tight, very controlled voice, Lantash said, "How is Martouf?"

"Not well," Sam said, equally controlled, polite, "but not in immediate danger of dying. His mind wanders when he's awake--he seems confused that he can't find you, Lantash. We've explained, but he never seems to remember...you know...what happened."

There was a brief moment, in which Jacob's eyes glowed brightly, twice, and Daniel could almost see the two of them fighting for control, even as they tried not to fight because it wasn't the way of the Tok'ra. Finally, though his hands remained fisted on the table, Jacob surfaced to say calmly, "George, we have to go back to help the Tok'ra soon--they need all the manpower they can get. But would you mind if we stayed for a day or two?"

General Hammond shook his head. "Of course not. Your old room is still empty, Lantash--you remember your way around this base?"

Lantash resurfaced. "I do, sir," he said, and, with a bow, they left the room. Sam looked at the table and sighed.

XXXXX

"I have a question," Daniel said.

"I am shocked," Oma said.

He rolled his eyes. "I was wondering about how you go about helping people Ascend."

"Really?" she said, a little suspicious. "Why?"

"Well, first of all," he said, holding up the latest book he had been reading. "Some of these pages are blank."

"Hm," she said, glancing at it. "Says a lot for you, doesn't it, when your mind conjures up blank books when it's looking for knowledge."

"Why are you more sarcastic when you come to me than you are when I go to you?" he said.

That was a mistake. He should have learned by now never to expect a straight answer from Oma, and certainly never to provoke her, even a little. When one perturbed Mother Nature, she perturbed one right back. "You see what you expect to see," she said, "and hear what you expect to hear. Are you used to arguing with someone else in this room?" She gestured around at the archaeology office that Daniel's mind had built around them.

_For crying out loud_, Daniel thought, and firmly did not wish Jack would walk through the door with a sarcastic comment and roll his eyes and take the book away. Clearing his throat, he said aloud, "So. About, uh...Ascending people."

"Why are you so interested in that?" she asked.

"I'm just curious," he said. "I'm not going to go Ascend large populations of people, Oma. It'd just be nice to have an idea of...well, the mechanics. How things work up here." Oma's answer was to fold her arms. "Anyway..." he continued. "Why are the pages blank? Is it a secret?"

"_Should_ it be kept a secret from you?" she retorted.

"Oh," Daniel said, understanding now. "So...this is like the compiled knowledge of all the Others, and some of it's blank because the Others don't want me to know?"

She shrugged. "Can you blame them?"

"I wouldn't do anything," he lied.

"Liar," she said. "You would have already if you'd known how to."

Daniel sighed. "Probably," he conceded. "I have another question. The Others don't want people Ascending other--sorry, _encouraging_ people to Ascend," he added when she looked about to correct him. "So they don't _like_ it when you do it, but they can't stop you, right? Because you keep doing it, so they must not have the power to--"

"Oh, Daniel," Oma said, shaking her head. "You _really_ don't understand. Do you think I'm the only Ascended who's ever wanted to help others reach this plane?"

"Um," he said. "Apparently the answer is 'no.'"

"But I'm the only one who does it, along with a very few of my disciples," she said.

"Because...everyone else is scared?" he said.

"Some, yes. Some others that I knew of are gone."

"Gone," Daniel repeated. "Like...gone? What do you mean by 'gone'?"

Oma raised her eyebrows at him. "Guess."

"Oh," he said. "Really? That's...oh."

He thought about Velona and Orlin again--Orlin, who had tried to help and whose punishment had been more people's suffering--and Oma, who had been exiled, if not for the same reason, then for similar intentions. Being scolded by General Hammond and put on probation for doing something stupid would seem like nothing compared to what Ascended beings could do to him.

"I don't think I like the Others very much," Daniel said, feeling small.

"Daniel," she said gently. "Don't think like that."

But he had never in his life--or afterlife--stopped thinking in some way just because someone told him to, so he asked, "What happens to someone who's Ascended and becomes..._gone_? The collective Others decide what kind of punishment fits the crime, and--"

"The punishment isn't meant to fit the crime," Oma said. "It's meant to prevent the offender from committing another crime."

Which was...a little unjust, Daniel felt, but probably practical. On the other hand... "They didn't do a very good job with you, then," he pointed out, "because...well, here I am, even though they probably wouldn't like me or my inclinations much."

"I've been warning you from the start," she said. "I do what I can because I must; I can't do more because they would stop me. We walk a fine line, Daniel. If you step wrong or too far, I'll stop you myself to spare you what the Others would do. Otherwise, they could stop _my_ work for your missteps, and I won't allow that to happen."

"Well...okay," he said. "But why didn't you just tell me this before, about the Others and their consequences, instead of just giving me a list of rules?"

"I was foolish," she said. "For some reason, I thought there was a slight chance you would simply follow the rules like most."

Resisting the urge to roll his eyes, he said, "You really thought that would work?"

"I know blind faith isn't your way, Daniel," she said.

"It's my job to question," he said.

"It's your nature," she agreed. "I just thought you might have a little more...respect for the native culture when you first found yourself in this new environment."

"Then," Daniel said, "you were trying to trick me into obeying. Or hiding the truth from me."

She considered for a moment, then said, "I guess I was."

Irritated, he asked, "I was going to find out, anyway. Why wouldn't you have wanted me to know what the Others are really like?"

Maybe it was because he felt so tiny under the weight of the Others' eyes and their judgment at the moment, but Oma Desala suddenly seemed much taller than he. He remembered that she wasn't just the person who insisted on annoying him and whom he insisted on annoying, or the person Daniel at once admired and couldn't understand at all. She was Mother Nature, who protected innocent children and dealt swift judgment with fire and lightning, and she had saved him from death.

"You have no idea what the Others are really like," she said, her voice low.

Daniel heard the danger in her tone but barreled on nonetheless. "I know they punish people for trying to help. Did you... Is this why you were so vague in the beginning, so I wouldn't know I was committing myself to _this_? To being like _them_?"

"This is _exactly_ why I didn't tell you, you self-righteous child," she snapped. "How dare you judge our ways and claim to be more right than the thousands and thousands of Others who have seen the things that you _still_ refuse to open your eyes to?"

Stung, Daniel said, "I can't...I don't know what it is I'm not seeing--what I'm expected to do."

"And until you can open your mind to that, you will never reach enlightenment. Until you stop blinding yourself to all the truths that I brought you here to see, you are guilty of judging the Others before you know them fully."

He swallowed hard, wary of the storm he could almost see behind her eyes.

"I didn't tell you because I didn't want you to jump to conclusions," Oma finished coolly. "As I knew you would--as you have. The Others have achieved great things, and if they are deeds that are too big for any one galaxy to see, that makes them no less important." She turned around. "When you can see that, you can ask me your questions again."

Suddenly afraid--and suddenly aware that it was Oma's aegis that had so far been his shield--Daniel said, "Wait--"

Oma stopped before she could step out of his cramped haven.

He cleared his throat. "Uh...I..." With every second that he couldn't think of what to say, he imagined her walking out and leaving him here. "I think maybe you shouldn't have picked me," he found himself saying.

She turned back, her expression softer, but she didn't move. "I stand by my actions," she said. "I promised you a new world, and I'll see that promise fulfilled...but you need to take the first step. Start by thinking about what I've said. Then, we will speak again."

"So you're not leaving?" he blurted.

"No, Daniel," she sighed. "I'm not leaving you. But I can't lead you by the hand the whole way--frankly, I'm not sure either of us would survive the experience if I tried."

Daniel smiled feebly.

"I will not push you," she said. "It took me far longer than this to adjust to my new existence when I first Ascended, so do not imagine that I don't understand your frustration. Find me when you're ready." And then she disappeared.

...x...

"Daniel," Shifu said.

"Hm?" Daniel answered without looking up.

"You cannot stay here forever. He who refuses to look up can never see the stars."

Daniel stared harder at a page he was reading that didn't make any sense. It wasn't the only one, and he'd thought that maybe he if just read a lot of them and fit them together, something would click into place. "I need to understand," he said. "I don't...I'm missing something, and I don't know even know what."

A small hand settled on top of Daniel's. He finally stopped and looked at Shifu, standing at his side and looking up at him with that solemn expression that didn't belong on any child but this one. "You _are_ missing something," Shifu said. "But a man cannot see the water if he fears to near the shore."

"I'm not afraid," Daniel said, but he suspected he was lying.

"Then why have you not looked?"

"I've looked!"

Shifu tilted his head. "And if you look deep enough to see everything that is open to you now," he said, "it will mean you are no longer Dan'yel of Nagada on Abydos, or Daniel Jackson of SG-1 of the SGC. It is wonderful, but difficult, as well, to be something you have never known."

Daniel stared at the book he was reading. He deliberately threw it as hard as he could, just to remind himself that it didn't matter, because it wasn't a real book. With a laugh, he said, "I can't even put aside the simple comfort of turning pages."

"There is no harm in simple comforts," Shifu told him. "But you must remember that there is more beyond them. Let me show you. In these confines is knowledge; but you must see for yourself to understand." He took a step back but, instead of leaving, stood watching and waiting patiently.

Slowly, Daniel stood. "Okay," he said. "Um."

"I once placed great trust in you, my brother," Shifu said. "Will you do the same in me?"

"Well..." Daniel said, and he found that, of everyone here, including Oma, Shifu was the familiar face he trusted the most. "Of course."

For that, Shifu smiled and took him by the hand. "Then let me show you."

Daniel grasped the little hand in his own. His haven of books, walls, and doors disappeared around them, and the abruptness surprised him so much that he immediately pulled the illusion back.

"No--open your eyes," Shifu chided. "I will be here."

So Daniel took a breath, held onto Shifu, and let go.

XXXXX

The Others didn't see in people and rooms, or in planets and galaxies. They didn't _see_, exactly, but rather _experienced_ in patterns. Paths crossed and diverged, life swelled and ebbed, and they were always surrounded by something--by matter, by energy, by each other, even though he didn't know who or what everyone else around him was.

The first time Daniel thought he had completely lost himself, because there was nothing between where he ended and everything else began, Shifu dragged him back to Kheb, retaking the form in which he usually manifested. "A sun throws away a small flame and does not know," he said as Daniel set his hand on a very solid tree, watching Shifu hold out a candle, "but a man is warmed."

Daniel smiled, remembering his first trip to Kheb, and lit the candle with a thought. "There's a saying on Earth about seeing a forest or its trees," he said, playing idly with the candle's flame and feeding it until he thought he could almost feel physical heat on his skin. "It's all about scale. You can't forget the big picture for the pieces, but the pieces matter, too."

"So Oma teaches," Shifu said, nodding.

"She would," Daniel said. Beyond this was more than could be seen from where one stood on the ground, but Oma's work was for those people who would be warmed by a tiny candle's flame and could not be ignored just because they were small. He took the candle completely and _pulled_ until it crumbled and joined the matter around them. "Can we go again?" he said, bracing himself, at once apprehensive of everything and exhilarated by it.

Shifu nodded to him and gestured away. "Go. I will follow."

XXXXX

It took time for Daniel to be able to understand how everything fit together when he immersed himself into the planes all at once, and even then, he knew he was still only barely grasping what was out there. When Shifu declared him able to continue on his own and Oma was nowhere to be found, Daniel resisted the urge to return to his library and instead dove back down into the lower plane, watching not the SGC or Abydos but rather their enemies.

Anubis was on a _hatak_ that was advanced beyond anything even Apophis had had. Intrigued, Daniel scanned through the corridors, trying to see what was happening here. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary at first--there were Jaffa everywhere, of course, standing guard or working on something else. The flow of power through the ship led him down into the engine room. Experimentally, Daniel slipped into the crystal panels' depths so he could watch and literally _feel_ how everything worked. Sam would have loved this.

And then, when he slipped back out, he found Anubis.

Daniel tried to get his first glimpse of the Goa'uld who had indirectly caused his death. He saw a black, cloaked figure standing in the _peltak_, and--

Anubis turned around and faced him.

Surprised, Daniel flinched back. A look around showed that the Jaffa didn't see anything. Reminding himself that he was incorporeal and there was no way Anubis could actually see him, he carefully walked closer and tried to see inside the cavernous hood Anubis wore over his face.

Suddenly, Anubis laughed.

Not sure what was happening, Daniel backed away and slipped out again.

...x...

"Having fun?" Oma asked when she found him following the tail of a comet, mesmerized by the second tail that streamed along beside him.

Daniel let himself mingle in the flowing sea of heat and energy and imagined he was grabbing onto the rock as it sped through space. "I feel like I'm flying," he said, fascinated.

She laughed. "What is it to fly if nothing holds you to the ground?"

He rolled his eyes obligingly, then gathered himself and reluctantly let the comet slip past him. "It's easy to get lost here," he said. "And I know, I know--he who is truly one with the world cannot be lost within it."

"You said it, not me," she told him.

With a sigh, Daniel turned back around to the SGC. No matter what he did or where he was, his gaze was always drawn back there. "Do you ever worry you'll forget?" he asked. "What if I lose sight of where I came from, now that there's so much more?"

"You have barely even stepped away from it," Oma answered. "Trust me, Daniel--forgetting where you came from is not your biggest worry. And I promise that I will not condemn you to an existence of doing nothing at all; you simply need to learn some control before we begin."

XXXXX

More than a month had passed since Daniel had not-died. Oma gave him an odd, exasperated look when he said that.

"I'm not still thinking in terms of their time," he said. "It's just...I was watching them, and I couldn't help but notice how much time has passed for them. Earth almost got hit by an asteroid, the Jaffa rebellion almost got slaughtered and then got saved by a System Lord, and my friends discovered and destroyed the origin of the Replicators."

That last one had been rather violent, actually. The girl--Reese--had had a mind and a name, and Jack had barely needed more than a single glance at a Replicator before shooting her point-blank. Daniel tried not to be disappointed in Jack, or even in Nyan for being too afraid to speak up against it.

Oma continued walking along the edge of the pond at her temple. "Time continues passing for us all," she said. "Be happy for them, that they are not crippled by your loss."

"They wouldn't've been," Daniel defended, following her. "And I am happy they're okay. Oma, about the Others, I...I think I understand. A little. I've been trying to see things like they would."

"You've been wandering around more recently," she said, nodding. "You don't confine yourself to your room of books like you used to."

"It's still overwhelming," he admitted.

"That's understandable," she assured him. "In time, it will no longer seem frightening, or even unusual, to leave what you know and to experience everything else. Instead, it will be--"

"Amazing," Daniel finished. "I've never been able to... I never would have thought it possible to see so much all at once and understand where everything fits into everything else. It's like...every path..."

He trailed off, turning his eyes away from where Oma stood guard over Kheb. As he spoke, he could feel anew the wash of elation that had struck him the first time he had dared to slip through planes and across universes, seeing everything and everyone and knowing why. There was a path for each choice, and each one led to a future that seemed just as real as the present, and Daniel wondered if they _were_ as real but in an alternate reality or on another plane...

Oma was smiling faintly at him.

"Is that what you see all the time?" Daniel asked, pulling back into her serene garden. The notion was awesome and, if he was honest, a little frightening, too. He hadn't thought he could ever feel so apprehensive about feeling so big.

"With time, you will learn to see exactly what you seek, not everything all at once--unless that is what you want," Oma promised.

"Everything's just jumbled together," he said. "I mean, it's incredible. But I can't see everything and still understand each part of it. And if I focus enough to see each part, I lose sight of the bigger picture."

She slowed her steps. "It becomes easier, to a point," she said after a moment. "But you can never have all of it at once. We have committed ourselves to guarding all we can see. We cannot see what threatens an entire galaxy or plane of existence if we look so closely at individuals that we forget there is more."

Daniel leaned on a railing and looked into her pond. "Shifu said something like that. The Others don't even look closer anymore, do they?"

"There are...more important things to do," she said. It was an odd thing for her to say, since he knew she didn't believe it, or at least not completely.

"Have there always been Ascended beings keeping existence from falling apart?" he asked. "I mean, it was fine before they got here--surely it'd be fine without them."

"Mm," she said. "Billions, trillions, uncountable numbers of people were fine before the SGC was formed--surely, they would be fine without the efforts of the Tau'ri. And yet the Tau'ri still try to save them."

"We--the SGC has saved a lot of people who would otherwise have died," he said.

"And the Others have healed rifts in many galaxies that would otherwise have collapsed," she replied. "They have, as a collective, helped many to Ascend. They have brought learning to more cultures than you can count."

"Well, there can't be _that_ many rifts that need mending," Daniel said.

"There can't be _that_ many individuals whose lives need saving," Oma returned, looking amused.

Maybe he really did just need to step back and look at a bigger picture. How many SGC personnel would have gone out of their way to save an anthill, after all, when they could do bigger things through the Stargate? It was hard to fault the Others for judging humans on the lower planes to be less important when humans did the same sort of thing all the time.

And yet...

Daniel studied Oma out of the corner of his eye as she watched fish chase each other through her pond. The difference, he thought, was that they had been human once--at least, it seemed that way from Oma and Shifu, and Orlin had said something like that to Sam. Perhaps one plane wasn't any more important than the others, but it was the plane from which they had come. Didn't it matter that it was their home?

Clearly, Oma thought it did.

"I can't just not do anything for my people," Daniel said. "I understand that the Others feel they need to limit what they do, but...I don't always agree with that."

"Ah," she said. "Well, that is a different matter."

He turned and looked at her directly. "You watch our plane as much as I do," he said. "You know what's happening there these days? Why I'm worried?"

She tilted her head. "It's only natural. While I wish for you to look ahead, I would not expect you to turn away from the past entirely. You worry for your friends."

But this time, he shook his head. "It's not just that. I worry that everything they could possibly do won't be _enough_. There's more at stake now than just them--more than just SG-1, or the SGC, or Earth and Abydos combined."

"Yes, there is," she said, but didn't elaborate. "I'm glad that you can see that."

Daniel sighed and looked at his feet for a long moment. "There's something else," he said finally. "I can tell that Anubis--that's the Goa'uld who--"

"I know who Anubis is."

"Well, he's different. Not right somehow."

Not looking surprised, she asked, "Do you know what it is that feels wrong to you?"

"I don't know," he said. "Something. It's not just that he's a Goa'uld and apparently stronger and smarter than the other System Lords. Something else."

"What?"

"I don't know," he repeated. "Actually, part of it is that I can't..._see_ him like everyone else on the lower planes. It's like something's blocking him from me. I can't figure out what it is."

"You will," she said.

He felt the corner of his lips lift against his will. "Suddenly you have faith in me?"

Oma didn't smile back. "You will learn the truth," she repeated. "I won't be able to stop you."

Daniel watched her thoughtfully. "Is he more powerful than the Others? Is that it?"

"What is power?" she said. She pushed away from the railing. "I will not play a guessing game with you. You'll discover the answer in time. For now, you are to learn and to observe. When you have learned enough, you will find ways to help as you have always wanted to."

"There has to be something I can do _now_," Daniel said. "You do things."

Oma was watching her temple, where those vague glimpses of light showed that her other disciples were around here somewhere. "Be very careful," she finally said.

He perked up. "Are you giving me permission to--"

"I am reminding you," she said, "that you are not the only one who has ever tried to walk a path like this, and that there is a reason so few dare to try. You're smart, Daniel--find a way to act within the rules, and do nothing that would draw the Others' anger."

"Okay," he said. "I can do that."

"And remember," she said, facing him again, "that anything you do may be meddling in the lives of lowers. You know the dangers of thinking that you have the right to decide the fates of others simply because you can."

"I wouldn't," he said.

"You would if you thought it was right thing to do," she corrected. "And so you must step carefully and watch your own actions more closely than any other."

XXXXX

SG-1 met Jonas Quinn on Kelowna two months after Daniel's not-death. Jonas's enthusiasm was infectious, at least to Nyan--Daniel certainly didn't know many others who could stay that excited about meeting new people even while their own planet was fearing civil war. There was no such thing as too much caution when one's government was building a nuclear weapon.

"No, no," Jonas said dismissively when Sam suggested their nuclear bomb might not be very safe. "Thank you for your concern, but I'm sure you are being overcautious."

"Yeah, well, so were people on Earth," Jack said, "up until they started blowing people up with bombs. And we didn't even have this...naquadria stuff."

"It's for our own defense," Jonas said earnestly. He really believed it, Daniel could tell, and the worst part was that the Kelownan government seemed to believe it, too.

"It always is at first," Jack said, but he didn't look like he particularly cared.

Sometimes, especially when he was very tired and frustrated, Jack thought that if people were stupid enough to do stupid things, then that wasn't his problem. And then someone would remind him about the innocents who didn't have a choice in the stupidity, and _then_ he'd yell at the people in charge, which usually didn't help. That was why he wasn't the only one on the team, though, and certainly not the one in charge of diplomacy.

Daniel waited for Nyan to speak up and tell Jack that. It seemed the rest of the team was waiting, too, because they didn't speak and glanced at him. Nyan didn't notice, though, and continued poring over the historical texts that Kelownan scholars had found.

It was a little painful to see Sam's face twist with annoyance at his silence before she turned away and said, "Sir, maybe Nyan and I could look at the work they've done here since the Stargate was discovered?"

"Yeah, all right," Jack said. "For what little it's worth if they won't listen."

Jonas seemed like a good person, though. Daniel thought he'd do the right thing, so he reluctantly withdrew.

...x...

It didn't take long for him to come back. Just to see, he told himself, not to interfere.

As it turned out, Jonas really thought they needed to build that weapon and didn't believe SG-1 when they told him it would end badly. To be fair, SG-1 couldn't know for certain just how badly it could go.

But Daniel knew, because years ago, when he'd been one of the junior personnel and had mostly gotten attached to Ferretti's team or a research team when safe missions came up, he had found writing about the late Goa'uld Thanos. The Kelownans knew almost nothing of the Goa'uld who had ruled them thousands of years ago; they didn't know they were about to repeat the mistakes that had killed not only most of the people on the planet at the time, but also Thanos himself. From the way Sam, Jack, and Teal'c frowned at the work, they probably suspected _something_ would go wrong.

Not Jonas, though. The man was formal enough when talking to SG-1, as befitted someone tasked with escorting and liaising with foreigners. But he was young for someone holding a prestigious position in his government, and Nyan could relate to that from his experience in the Bedrosian Academy, so the two of them spent much of their time together on Kelowna, one's excitement fueling the other's.

"You get to do this all the time," Jonas said wistfully while Sam was looking at whatever part of Kelownan technology they let her see and Jack and Teal'c reluctantly followed her around. "I wish I could do that. I know my work here is important, but knowing how much more is out there..." He shook his head.

Nyan was quiet for a while and continued scanning over an old text Jonas was showing him. "I don't usually do this," he finally said.

Jonas grinned, the warm, friendly smile he so often wore. "Oh--are you new?"

"In a manner of speaking," Nyan said quietly, but he didn't go on. Jonas proved to be perceptive enough not to press him for more. "Anyway, I'm not very good at it."

"Of course you are," Jonas said encouragingly, but Daniel had been watching and knew what Nyan meant.

Nyan was competent, smart, and braver than he admitted, but his heart wasn't in it. He had other ambitions and didn't particularly want to be on the front lines, and one didn't join SG-1 if it wasn't what one lived for. SG-1 and its missions could become almost an obsession, but it had to be, because they couldn't afford to doubt or to hesitate--if SG-1 wasn't all they had, it meant they had other conflicting interests that could get in the way. Even Sam and Jack, who lived off-base on Earth, had little difficulties justifying their secrets to others because there weren't many others to hide their secrets from. It was how they worked best, and Nyan didn't fit that, no matter how much he tried to do his duty or carry on a friend's work.

"I'm not made for adventures," Nyan confided in his new friend, glancing over his shoulder, "and the others would agree. I think they would rather have their team without me."

"Oh." Jonas was quiet for a while. Then, he said, "Well, I still think it would be fun."

"It would be better than what you're doing now."

Jonas made a face. "You, too? All of you oppose our weapons research?"

Nyan turned to face him completely. "Do you really think a big enough weapon will do anything except kill a lot of people?"

Uneasiness passed across Jonas expression, but he said, "It's not about killing _them_; it's about preventing them from killing _us_. You don't understand what it's been like--"

"No?" Nyan interrupted. "My people were at war, too, since before I was born; I know what it is to live with that kind of fear. But think about what you're building and...and about what the _only_ thing you can do with it is. A bomb can never be a shield."

"But the _possibility_ of a bomb can be a shield," Jonas answered, clearly knowing this script well.

"If you believe that three governments looking for a war could have a naquadria bomb without using it, then you will be very disappointed," Nyan said, his voice holding an edge that rarely appeared in him. "I learned the hard way about world wars."

Jonas took a breath as if to answer, then fell silent. "We are only testing the technology now," he finally said. "In its final stages, we will be able to control every aspect of it."

Nyan sighed and went back to reading.

...x...

Nothing was ever certain about any future. From Daniel's vantage point, it was becoming increasingly easy to see the paths available at every juncture, to predict a future based on present factors the way one of Sam's computer models could predict an outcome with a certain degree of error. The problem was that, when there were factors Daniel couldn't know, the error margin became quite large. He could predict what SG-1 and even Nyan would most likely do in response to most things, because he knew them. Jonas, though, and the Kelownans... They were unknown variables.

While Jonas explained to Nyan how the Stargate had been discovered recently, Daniel bent over the text they had just been reading together, scanning through it to find...

There. That would catch Nyan's attention. Daniel found a pen on the table and, while the other two were still turned away, _pushed_ it very slightly so that it left a faint line of ink over the word 'god'.

Finally, Nyan started to pick up his pen, then stopped, still looking at the text thoughtfully. "Jonas," he said, "Colonel O'Neill spoke to you about the Goa'uld, right?"

"Yes," Jonas said. "I'm starting to think that the god mentioned in these texts might have been one of them."

"Do you know his name?" Nyan asked.

"Thanos," Jonas said. "It's mentioned...just here."

"Think, Nyan," Daniel urged silently as his friend perused the text again, brow furrowed. "You've studied all the Goa'uld we know. You must recognize the name."

"Is something wrong?" Jonas asked.

Nyan chewed on his lower lip, and then--"I think we've heard of Thanos before."

Jonas perked up. "Really? Who was he?"

"We've only found brief mentions of him," Nyan said, thinking hard, "and even those were found before my time. I'm sure I could find the references, though. In fact, I can just call base tonight and ask Dan--"

He stopped, looking surprised at his slip. Daniel winced, well aware of how those moments could sneak up on a person when he wasn't thinking.

"Dan?" Jonas asked.

"Uh...n-never mind," Nyan stuttered. "Um. It should be in our records. From what I remember reading, Thanos tried to create something that apparently didn't end...very well..." He paused, looking alarmed, then stood up. "I'll find out what we have in our records."

Jonas was frowning in confusion, but then offered another small smile. "All right. Thank you."

...x...

Nyan called the SGC to ask about Thanos. They were still only partway done sorting through the mess of notes Daniel had left behind, but any mention of any Goa'uld was, according to protocol, noted in a central database. Daniel winced as he watched Cameron Balinsky sift through it for Nyan; there was only a single sentence in their records.

"Not very informative, I guess," Daniel said aloud while Cameron answered Nyan's question across the wormhole and promised to look again for the full report.

"Too bad Daniel wasn't more thorough," Cameron said into the control room microphone. "I'll keep looking, but I'll bet the original writing was shipped to some Area 51 archive."

_"That's okay,"_ Nyan answered from the other side. _"Thanks, Cameron."_

...x...

"I think Thanos did something terrible," Nyan told Jonas and the rest of SG-1 at once. "He...well, we don't know exactly, but the guess was that he was conducting an experiment on a form of altered naquadah and many people died."

He paused as the others seemed to think that over. "But we are not certain that the incidents are related," Teal'c said when no one else seemed to want to.

"You mean the naquadah experiments and the people dying?" Nyan said. "Well, no, but it's a little bit suspicious."

"You don't think... " Jonas said. "But _our_ research couldn't possibly--"

"Your records show an explosion thousands of years ago," Nyan reminded him. "Many people died, around the time Thanos disappeared from your history. That can't be a coincidence."

"You're saying it's the same as what we're doing now?" Jonas said.

"It's certainly a good enough reason to slow down and take a second look at it," Sam said.

"You know," Jack added, "since you're the guy in charge of bomb-building ethics and all."

"I can speak to my superiors," Jonas said, "but there is little I can do without proof."

"If we're right, then this might only be a 'test,' but it could eventually endanger many, many more," Nyan insisted. "At least try to convince them to act with caution."

"I'll tell them about this," Jonas promised. "I can't promise anything."

"Jonas, can you give me the naquadria data you already have?" Sam said. "I'll review it on the SGC computers and see if we can help with improving safety protocols, if your government still wants to go on with it."

"Um...I really shouldn't--" Jonas started.

"People could die," Jack said, stabbing a finger into Jonas's sternum to cut off his words. "Maybe we can help you, but you have to get that test stopped or you'll be one of the ones responsible."

"Your own historical records support our suspicions," Nyan pointed out. "They may not be proof, but surely you can see they merit more study."

Jonas still seemed hesitant, but he nodded. "I'll speak with the ministers."

...x...

Governments in wartime were fascinating. Robert Rothman had made Daniel write a report on the subject once. The assignment had been meant mostly as an exercise in research and writing reports, but Daniel had found it very relevant to their work.

Jonas Quinn had to know all of that; he treated SG-1 with respect, but with just enough hesitation that he clearly felt as strongly about his nation's wartime secrecy as the rest of his government. For some reason, though, he seemed to be under the impression that things like reason and evidence would sway ministers' opinions at a time like this.

In fact, Jonas seemed surprised when he held up the SGC's notes and stood with his mouth half-open as First Minister Velis berated him for giving scientific data to outsiders like Sam.

"This borders on treason," Velis said.

"We cannot trust them," Commander Hale warned.

"But...there is evidence," Jonas insisted, shaking Daniel's reports at them even though they weren't hard evidence of anything but speculation. "I reviewed our own records, too, Minister, and I think they might be correct, after all. Besides, it does us no harm to investigate more carefully if this kind of destruction is truly a possibility. Why would they lie to us?"

"For our naquadria," Ambassador Dreylock suggested. "They have shown great interest in it. And do you not find it suspicious that they bring this...'evidence' to you just after they learned of our testing? Or that Major Carter's first thought was to ask for more data on our technology?"

"I didn't give them _everything_," Jonas said. "Only enough to make them see the value of naquadria--it could make them more willing to trade with us. Ambassador, you've seen their technology--it's far beyond ours. Major Carter can use that knowledge to help our people. If this test fails like they think it will, millions of our people could be hurt."

Despite agreeing, Daniel marveled that Jonas Quinn had even that much confidence in people who walked through wormholes and appeared in his country, and who were themselves a bit wary of full disclosure. Jack's first question in the same situation--maybe even Daniel's--would have been whether or not it was possible that the newcomers were allies or acquaintances of Kelowna's enemies.

For a moment, Daniel wondered if he had picked the right person. Jonas's eagerness, his loyalty to his nation, his desire to prove himself... They weren't necessarily flaws, but they could be exploited. Jonas might be lost to his government's paranoia, and then what Daniel had been hoping would happen would collapse.

"Millions?" Hale said. "This is only a small-scale test. Even if it were to go wrong, the destruction will be nowhere near that. Clearly, the SGC is misleading you."

Jonas' held up a book in his hands. "No, no--it's not only the immediate effects. This is information compiled by Earth's scientists on what would happen in the aftermath of a nuclear explosion, especially if their calculations are correct. Commander, I think there's enough data to warrant further investigation."

"You are one of our brightest, Jonas," Velis said. "Do you know for certain that what they say is true?"

Jonas hesitated. "Well...no," he said. "We have not seen these kinds of effects before, but they are within the realm of possibility. I do not believe the blast could be nearly as powerful as they suggest, but, if they _are_ right--"

"No," Velis said decisively. "Thank you for bringing this information to our attention, but this test is too important--and the need too urgent--for a few foreigners' unfounded fears to interrupt."

"Sir," Jonas said carefully, "I've examined their data. They could be correct. With so many lives at stake, perhaps it...it would be wise--"

"Our country's _freedom_ is at stake," Vale interrupted again. "We will proceed as planned, and we'll inform the guards that the SGC is no longer welcome here, if this is what they offer us."

"Oh--no," Jonas said. "Minister, don't you see how much the SGC can do for us? It's not only for the naquadria test--they can tell us how to use the Stargate. It's...it's _limitless_ potential--"

"Was our position unclear to you, Jonas?" Velis interrupted.

Jonas ducked his head and frowned at the floor. "No. I understand," he said, bowing slightly. "Minister, please, just give me a few days first--let me speak with them again. Maybe I can learn more about them and their technology--if nothing else, I can learn whether they are lying and try to find more evidence of what they suspect."

They exchanged glances. Daniel wondered whether Jonas could tell how suspicious they were--or, if he could, whether he knew that suspicion was now aimed at him. In trying to remain neutral between Kelowna and the SGC, he had managed to make both sides question him.

"You have our permission, then," Velis finally said, his tone deceptively mild. Jonas brightened. "Go. We will give you and the SGC one more week."

"Thank you," Jonas said, and left.

Velis waited for the door to close behind Jonas, then turned to Commander Hale. "He will be watched," Hale assured him. "We should move the project somewhere else, where he cannot tamper with it."

"Do you really think Jonas Quinn would--" Dreylock started.

"We cannot be certain, now that he is conspiring with the outsiders," Hale interrupted. "Better to make sure he cannot interfere."

Daniel lingered nearby to listen to them talk and scheme and wished very, very hard he could do something more useful. He sighed and carefully resolved to stay away from any more nudging.

His resolve didn't last long.


	4. Part II: Ascension, 3 of 4

**Part II (cont'd)**

Whispers of suspicion followed Jonas around in the days after that. Daniel watched him talk to SG-1, apparently oblivious to the shifting political winds around him. Maybe it was because he was preoccupied in comparing notes on science with Sam and Nyan that he didn't have time to check on the bomb project in person. He didn't even seem to notice when the testing site was discreetly moved to another building and his access revoked.

"It'll be too late by the time you notice," Daniel said, tempted to say something audible when he followed Jonas to his home one evening.

Jonas sat down on his bed, opened a book on nuclear winter that Nyan had found for him, and began to read.

"It's true, you know," Daniel said. "Everything SG-1 has been saying...they mean well. I know Jack's not very nice sometimes, but you could do a lot worse than--"

"Hello?" Jonas said, looking around.

Daniel froze and held his breath. He looked nervously over his shoulder and was a little relieved not to see Oma there with a disapproving look on her face. _Oops_.

Shaking his head at himself, Jonas put the book down, picked up a stack of papers, and began to write. Daniel waited a few more minutes, until he was certain no one was coming to yell at him, then moved around to see what the man was writing.

Jonas had sketched a picture of the Stargate, with notes all over the page about things SG-1 had mentioned. On one of the other sheets, there was another picture of the 'gate, this one with the _kawhoosh_ depicted in the middle. There was another sheet with equations, some of which Daniel vaguely remembered from the packet of information Sam gave to all new SGC physicists. Jonas had scribbled questions all around those, too, about why this was necessarily equivalent to that, or why this set of equations implied the next step...

"It really _is_ that incredible," Daniel said, watching him eagerly compile all the information he'd learned. When Jonas paused for a moment to stare into space, Daniel looked around, took a breath, and said, "Really, you can trust them. SG-1's not the people you should be worried about right now. They can _help_ you."

A touch of remorse followed when Jonas stopped again to frown at the door, as if a bit of suspicion had snuck in and he wasn't sure where to direct it.

Daniel backed away. He wasn't supposed to be talking to people who were still alive, even subliminally. Even as he backed all the way out of the room, though, he found he wasn't as sorry as he probably should have been; he was doing the right thing, after all. Jonas was still trying to do the right thing, and relations between him and the SGC could be a huge benefit to both planets--not to mention the lives that might be spared if the Kelownan government could be made to open its eyes. There was nothing wrong with nudging that along a little.

He just had to make sure Oma didn't find out.

...x...

Some time later, perhaps a week--it was getting harder for Daniel to keep track these days--Dr. Balinsky called Kelowna to say that they'd had the original reference about Thanos shipped over from Nellis. "Do you want to come to Earth and see for yourself?" Nyan said eagerly to Jonas.

"Can I?" Jonas answered.

"No," Jack said.

"But, Colonel--" Nyan started.

"No, Nyan!" Jack snapped. Nyan shut up and looked at the floor. Sam cleared her throat and looked hard at a blueprint. Teal'c looked at Jack. Jonas looked like he was considering leaving the angry people alone. Jack sighed. "Not," he amended grudgingly, "until the general gives us permission."

Nyan, a little more subdued and still quite wary around Jack, called General Hammond to say that Jonas might be more convinced of the dangers of the naquadria bomb project if he saw more evidence. At least, it might convince him of the benefits of listening to SGC advice when he saw how much more technologically advanced Earth was. Besides, he was wanted to know about that thing with Thanos out of purely academic curiosity, too, and since it was against policy to take a report out of base and bring it into a very fragile political situation, they could just bring Jonas to it, couldn't they?

Jonas wouldn't try to sabotage them or anything, Nyan insisted, really, General, he wouldn't.

Jack told the general privately that he didn't have a lot of confidence in Nyan's judgment of character just yet, but regardless of his intentions, the rest of them had judged Jonas to be a low-level threat. He was an academic, not a trained fighter, and SG-1 would accompany him everywhere, not to mention that SFs would be watching him.

"You don't have to worry," Daniel said from where he was perched on the arm of Jack's chair in the general's office, knowing they wouldn't hear. "He has good intentions."

"You're sure about this," General Hammond said.

"Yes, sir," Jack said. "We can keep an eye on him."

In fact, they kept such a close eye on him that Jonas seemed rather nervous. Jack wasn't exactly trying to be subtle about standing guard.

"This says 'naquadria,'" Jonas said as he read Daniel's old report. "Yes, this is the same word, but the person who translated this must not have known it."

"I _did_ note that it was different from the word for 'naquadah,'" Daniel said defensively.

"Then you must see the connection," Sam said. "Mentions of Thanos in two places, the same mineral, experiments resulting in massive destruction..."

"These equations are wrong, though," Jonas said.

Daniel sighed. "That was the best I could do at the time with the text I found," he said. "I never claimed to be good at math."

"The person who translated this had probably just finished learning algebra," Sam said, looking on with Jonas. "Nothing nearly as complex as your experiments. Besides, if this was a slave's interpretation of Thanos's work, it could easily be less accurate than your calculations."

"All right," Jack said irritably. "Someone get to the point."

"Sir," Sam said, "this is just more support for our theory that the Kelownans' naquadria research could have the same results as Thanos's research."

"Which would be..._boom_," Jack summarized. Jonas winced.

"Yes, sir," Sam said.

"But it's still not solid proof," Jonas said. "There are no details here, and even the type of naquadah used on this other planet could have been different from naquadria."

Jack raised his eyebrows, looking like he was rapidly losing what little patience he'd had to begin with. "How _solid_ do you need your evidence to be?"

This time, Jonas looked uncharacteristically grim. "You must understand, Colonel O'Neill," he said. "My government will accept nothing less than proof that is impossible to refute. They might even claim that this document was forged."

"Of course," Jack muttered.

Looking a bit reluctant--and more than a bit nervous--Jonas said, "But I...believe that I can trust you and your people."

Nyan perked up. Jack exchanged a glance with Teal'c and Sam, then said, "Okay...and?"

"I was hoping you could help me," Jonas said, reaching into a pocket on his uniform. He froze as SG-1 all took a step back and the SFs at the door raised their weapons. "It is only data," he said, slowly pulling out the Kelownan version of a disk and holding it out to Sam. "If you can read it with your..." He glanced at Daniel's old desk.

"Computers," Teal'c filled in.

"If you can read it with your computers, maybe you could learn enough about naquadria to better predict the consequences of the test, or suggest a better protocol," Jonas finished. "Please."

Sam accepted it, frowning. "I thought you already gave me your people's data."

"Very little of it," Jonas admitted. When Sam looked resigned rather than surprised, he said, "I wasn't supposed to. My people _need_ to build that weapon, and I knew you would only..." He stopped. "But I have been reviewing what you told me, and my government does not think my conclusions are enough to allow further study before the test."

"Oy," Jack sighed. "I take it you've tried talking to the brass."

Jonas opened his mouth, then closed it, looking confused.

"Your superiors," Teal'c explained.

"Oh," Jonas said. "Yes, I have. And...and they believe they are being subtle, but I found out that I am being watched." Daniel straightened, revising his opinion of the man. Not completely naïve or unobservant, then; just a little too hopeful. "They suspect me of...of conspiracy with you, perhaps. I don't know, precisely. But if I have something to show our scientists, they, at least, can stop this testing and give us time to learn more."

With a glance at Jack, Sam said, "I can try, but I don't know if it'll help. If you had enough data to model exactly what the bomb would do, then, well, we wouldn't need to have this conversation now."

"Your knowledge of this science is far more advanced than ours," Jonas said. "That is one of the reasons I truly believe our peoples can benefit from each other--we have a resource you do not, and you have so much you could teach us, especially now that we are facing an attack from hostile nations. I just need a way to prove to my government that you mean well."

Jack stared at him. "We can't intervene in your politics," he said.

"But I can," Jonas said. "All I ask is technical advice."

"There is more that endangers your people than simply technical matters," Teal'c said. "Once you have built a bomb, there will be nothing to stop your people from using it."

"There might be, if I can give them a reason to slow down," Jonas replied.

"It won't be easy, even if you think it will be," Nyan said. "Sometimes, even irrefutable evidence isn't enough for a government ready for war. If you oppose them alone, you're giving them someone to blame."

Jonas didn't answer. His expression was troubled, though, either because of Nyan's persuasion or Daniel's suggestions or simply his own morals.

"What's it gonna be?" Jack said, challenging. "Save your own skin, or try to help hundreds of people on your planet, like you claim you want to do? Your government looks ready to turn on you--you wanna trust them or trust facts?"

"All right," Jonas finally said. "Please help me, and I will see what I can do when I return."

Kelowna wasn't more important than Earth or any of millions of other planets. Daniel knew that, and he couldn't even claim to have a stake in it for his friends, because his friends were on Earth and safe from the naquadria project. But saving Kelowna would mean something, too--maybe it wasn't part of the bigger picture, but it was hundreds of thousands of lives, and that still meant something. And it would mean there was something Daniel could do as an Ascended being--that he hadn't Ascended and left his friends behind for nothing.

While Jonas and Sam sat down around a computer, Daniel slipped away from the SGC and into Kelowna.

...x...

As soon as he arrived, Daniel knew he was too late.

The test had already begun, ahead of schedule, miles away, in an effort to distance it from the suspicions Jonas had raised. The device was overloading, and the results would be devastating. He could see it, could see the heat and everything wrong building up, and he knew that, if it exploded right here, the entire facility was going to be destroyed and a whole country or more could be poisoned. More than that, there were deep veins of naquadah beneath the planet's surface, and the damage could be hundreds of times worse than anyone had predicted.

The particles being emitted now were of a type that Daniel didn't think even Sam would know much about--they were high enough in energy to begin converting the planet's naquadah to naquadria. If the reactor overloaded, the blast might be enough to detonate the already-formed naquadria, which would only speed the conversion reaction even more, and eventually--sooner than later--there would be nothing to stop the heat and pressure of the planet's core from detonating the naquadria veins. _Nothing_ on the planet would survive that.

Scientists were lying on the ground, stunned or worse. The ones who could still move were reaching for the device.

Daniel followed their movements and the energy radiating from the device and found himself staring at the main power source. Someone had to remove the core before everything was lost, but they couldn't--they were too weak, they were dying...

He closed his eyes, then turned toward the scientist who was closest to the device--a Dr. Philon Silas, one of the head scientists Daniel had seen working on this project. "Get up," he ordered loudly. The man's eyes fluttered open. "Get _up_!"

He wasn't going to make it. Daniel watched him struggle toward the bomb and knew it wouldn't be enough. Another shockwave rippled through the room. The radiation penetrating the inadequately shielded walls of the building was already affecting others in the vicinity, even if they didn't know it yet. If nothing was done now, the entire planet was doomed.

Making the decision, Daniel bent down to the weakening scientist, grabbed his arm to force him to his feet, and--

Something ripped Daniel away from the scientist he had been helping toward death and spun him around. Oma Desala's furious face was the last thing he saw before the device overloaded and Kelowna disappeared around him.

XXXXX

Kheb was dark this time.

It was the same temple, the same garden, the same pond, but the sky was black with storm clouds. Lightning crackled just outside the walls, and, even while immaterial, Daniel had to resist the urge to clamp his hands over his ears at the roll of thunder that followed on its heels. Even if the lightning couldn't do anything to him, Oma could.

"How could you be so _foolish_?" Oma roared, like the sound of wind pounding against rocks.

Daniel stared at her, frozen, scared of her for the first time. Lightning flashed again, closer than before, and this time he flinched. "I-I couldn't just--" he started, his voice almost drowned out by the storm of Oma's anger.

Without warning, the storm quieted, until it was completely silent. There was no sound of birds, though, or even of gentle splashing in the pond. The wind was still, but the sky remained black.

"You couldn't," Oma repeated, a whisper, but piercing in the silence. "You simply could not leave things as they were."

"But..." Daniel said. Despair washed over him as he wondered how many people were dead already, and whether all the rest were doomed to death soon, too. "Oma...an entire world--"

"An entire world, Daniel," she said, and even though she hadn't moved, Daniel found himself taking a step back. "_You_ wanted to take the fate of an _entire world_ into your own hands!"

He swallowed, then said defensively, "So what if I did?"

Oma still didn't move, but her gaze sharpened. "What did you just say?" she asked softly.

"They were going to kill everyone in that country--on that whole _planet_--out of ignorance!" Daniel snapped. "Why did you stop me? Do you realize how many--"

"Why Jonas Quinn?" she said. "You chose to save him."

She didn't sound mad anymore. Daniel knew she still was, though, and didn't know what to make of this sudden calm. _The calm in the eye of the storm_, he thought, and remembered the last time he had seen Oma Desala as Mother Nature in full fury.

"No, I didn't," Daniel protested. "It wasn't about him. I was trying to keep his world safe, and he...he was--"

Now, she took a step toward him. "You used Nyan to speak to Jonas Quinn, you planted ideas in his mind, and so he was on Earth during the test instead of observing as he should have been. He would have died, but perhaps he would have been able to stop the massive destruction."

So there _had_ been destruction. Daniel glanced back, but she was holding him here on Kheb and not letting him out of her grasp, even just to look. "And _perhaps_ he wouldn't have changed a thing," he said. "I wasn't trying explicitly to do anything to Jonas--"

"But you did!" she yelled, silencing him. "Your actions have consequences, Daniel Jackson! You didn't mean to make the Kelownans accelerate their plans, but you did. You didn't mean to save one man from certain death, but you did. You chanced an entire world on a hope you didn't have to right to impose on them, and you didn't even realize it--you still don't!"

"Why are you allowed to help people one at a time, and I'm not?" he burst out. "You slaughtered an army to save the lives of six people on Kheb. Why couldn't I pick Jonas to help them if you could pick me to...to...whatever it is you want me to do? I thought they would listen to him. I thought that would be enough to stop the testing. I was just--"

"--using him," Oma said. "For your own ends."

"For _good_," he said.

"Who are you to decide that?" she said.

"They would have lived, all of them, if you'd let me finish," he said. "How can that be bad?"

"You manipulated events in an attempt to save the lives of people willing to ignore reason to pursue world-wide violence," Oma said dangerously. "You would have allowed a weapons testing facility full of people be exposed to a form of radiation that, among other things, would increase their state of paranoia, and then you would have made them live."

"How can _you_ decide they're not worth saving?" Daniel retorted. "Being wrong doesn't mean they deserve to die. I didn't do anything I couldn't have done in life--even the information they used was something I discovered years ago, not something I learned after Ascending. It was barely anything, Oma. They might have even done it without me."

"But stopping the bomb was more than that. You, not they, would have done it."

Bitterly angry, he said, "Except you stopped me."

"And that," she said icily, "may be only reason the Others have not punished us both already."

"For _that_?"

"And you thought Jonas Quinn was naive," Oma said, no trace of kindness or compassion now. "If they had seen, they would have stopped you. Worse, they would have punished Kelowna."

"Wh..._what_?" Daniel said.

"What if you knew that circumventing the rules would end _worse_ for the people you were trying to help?" she said. "What better deterrent could there be?"

The implication rendered Daniel speechless for a moment. When he regained his voice, he said, "But...how can it be wrong, what I did? I miscalculated at first, but I would have fixed it."

She didn't answer. In spite of the clouds still covering the sun, Daniel could see her clearly, her figure shining--burning angrily--as she stared at him without moving. "Time has passed for them," she finally said. "Look down."

He looked down.

Abnormal MALP readings had stopped Jonas from returning to Kelowna, just in time for SG-1 to grab radiation suits first before they barreled through the wormhole. The city where they had carried out the test was in pieces, and only the Kelownans' paranoia about Jonas's allegiances had ensured that it hadn't been the capital city; it was a smaller town with fewer people, far enough that the Stargate hadn't been caught in the blast. Radiation poisoning had affected many more than that city, though, and the consequences were spreading.

The earthquakes were starting. No one knew exactly why or how--even Sam seemed shocked at just how great the damage was--but it didn't matter; the planet was falling apart. None of the Kelownans was denying it now, not even the government officials who had been far enough from the testing site to survive the first blast.

The Tiranians and the Andari were, of all things, _celebrating_ what they considered a step forward in the cold war with the Kelownans...at least, they had been, until SG-1 found a way to contact them and tell them that the naquadria below the surface of the planet was rapidly becoming unstable.

_"You have to evacuate,"_ Sam was saying from what sounded like a long way away. _"We can offer our assistance in finding a suitable planet whose current inhabitants are willing to help you, but you've gotta start moving now before it's too late!"_

Daniel tried to lean in closer to hear the rest- -

"What is it you think the Kelownans will do now?" Oma said, dragging his eye away before he could see what happened next. "Or even the Tiranians or Andari?"

"Learn from the mistake," he said. "Make things better."

Oma smiled, but there was no amusement in it. Stepping aside, she gestured toward the doorway to her temple and said, "Think on it for a while."

Daniel didn't follow her. "Think on it," he repeated. "That's all you have to say? Millions of people there are either dead or dying and millions more are in grave danger, and you want me to _meditate?_"

He turned, ready to leave and watch the relocation effort, even if he didn't dare to lend a hand again, but he found himself trapped, unable to move, as if he were truly human again and bound to the land on Kheb. "Yes," Oma said calmly as Daniel struggled futilely against her. "Think. And _then_ I will allow you to watch. Perhaps then you will see just what your actions have taught them."

XXXXX

By the time Oma let him leave, the surviving people of Jonas's planet had been transported to Madrona.

"They've got that Touchstone," Jack said irritably. "If the Kelownans start up a stink, the Madronans can make it rain on them."

"Sir," Sam chastised, but halfheartedly, "the idea is that the Kelownans--and their rivals--are starting from scratch, and good rainfall and weather conditions will be vital for initial survival."

"Still," Jack said. "_I'd_ make it rain on them. Maybe a little hail."

Sam looked like she wanted to take the high moral ground, but admitted, "I might, too."

The relocation had barely ended when Jonas tumbled back into the SGC, looking like he hadn't slept in a week as he said, "Please. Can I stay here?"

It only took a quick call to Madrona to figure out what had happened.

"_You have accepted a thief and a traitor_," Velis radioed across the wormhole. "_A murderer_."

Jonas closed his eyes where he sat inside the SGC control room, and even Jack looked like he felt a little bad. "Mr. Quinn came to us for help to stop you from killing your own people," General Hammond said. "If you had listened to him or to us in the first place, a lot of tragedy could have been avoided."

_"It is interesting that you claim that this happened,"_ Velis said, _"only after Jonas gave you the plans for our device and then sabotaged our project before reporting to your facility. We saw your personnel taking naquadria from our planet in the days before it was finally destroyed."_

"Oh, right," Jack said, "sorry for picking up a few rocks on the way back from saving your asses."

"I didn't sabotage anything," Jonas said, sounding thoroughly betrayed.

_"Dr. Leed told us everything,"_ Velis snapped.

"Tomis Leed?" Jonas echoed. "What does he have to do with anything?"

_"He saw you tamper with the device. You ran just as we were about to initiate the test--you knew full well what the consequences of your betrayal would be: a city of people killed, hundreds ill, millions ripped from their homes..."_

"He is lying!" Jonas protested. "I didn't even know the testing date had been changed. I showed you the data and told you what was going to happen, but that wasn't because of anything _I_ did to the device. How could you think I--"

"They don't think that, Mr. Quinn," General Hammond said, his tone hard. "They know the truth as well as we do, but they've made up their minds. It's easier to blame you than themselves."

Daniel stood in his corner and felt like a disobedient child all over again.

Once the wormhole had closed, Jack said, "Hey, so, uh..." He cleared his throat. "Sorry, Jonas."

"It's not your culpability, Colonel," Jonas said numbly.

"Fault," Jack corrected.

Jonas finally looked away from the Stargate and blinked up at Jack. "What?"

"Ah...never mind," Jack said awkwardly. "We'll work on it."

"Sir," Sam said, looking at the general, "we _will_ be granting Jonas asylum here, won't we?"

"Of course," the general said. "You're welcome here, son. Colonel, if you and your team could help Mr. Quinn get settled?"

"There's an empty office you could probably use," Nyan told Jonas.

Jack's sympathetic expression dropped rigidly away.

"Um," Nyan said, a bit nervously, but when no one told him to stop, he went on, "The reports on Thanos would be there, too, and lots of other materials. Mostly social science things, if you're interested. I just thought...I know you like to study, and that might be a good place to start. It's right down the hall from the base library, too, and next to my office."

"All right, fine," Jack said briskly. "We'll find somewhere for you. Carter, go make sure all radiation checks are done, and get whatever naquadria we picked up into a shielded lab."

"Wait," Jonas said before he could be led away. "General Hammond?"

"What is it?" the general said.

"If I am to stay here, then let me help," Jonas said, just a step away from pleading. "I'm smart, I'm strong...I can help."

Daniel knew that feeling.

Perhaps SG-1 was also remembering those times years ago when Daniel had begged for the same--to help, because he was very capable and he couldn't go home--because Sam swallowed hard before she said, "We'll see, Jonas. Come on, this way."

"I will show you to your quarters," Teal'c said, and led the way out.

XXXXX

He could feel Oma Desala watching him over the next weeks. It would be a long time before she stopped watching him so carefully again, now that he had shown what he would do as soon as she turned her back. It didn't matter, though. He wasn't doing anything, so as long as Oma didn't yank him away again, he was going to stay and watch and see what was going on.

He glanced past Robert's desk, and then took a second, closer look: there was something on the surface of the desk, and one of the drawers was very slightly ajar. Daniel stepped closer and looked at it. It was covered with mission files, SGC history, three textbooks and piles of other papers littering the surface, with an orange peel in the nearest trashcan...

This was Jonas's desk now.

Perhaps in an attempt to stop thinking about Kelowna and the fact that his people had nearly destroyed themselves and then blamed him for it, Jonas had dived straight into it everything, from textbooks to histories, to mission records.

As Daniel watched him now, he was curiously reading an old note from Robert Rothman in the margin of a book that said to please not write in the margins of the books, Mr. Jackson, and if it was really necessary, at least to do people the favor of writing in a language that more than one person could understand. Daniel had answered with lines of gibberish in ancient Ancient. Robert must have actually tried to translate it before realizing it was nonsense, because he'd written _'Not funny'_ under it.

Jonas huffed a bemused laugh, and Daniel could almost see him cataloguing the names and the kinds of things that little notes in book margins implied about the people who used to work in this office.

"There aren't many people on off-world teams," Jonas said to Nyan once. "Proportionally, I mean. Is that because it's hard to get onto an SG team?"

Nyan made a face. "Yes, but some of us would just rather deal with a semi-monthly chance of death by autodestruct instead of a more present form of danger off-world," he explained. "It's not always a matter of being more or less capable; it's about being right for the job. The teams have to fit. There are better archaeologists and interpreters than me, but SG-1 rejected them all."

"They must like you, then," Jonas said, smiling.

"They feel like they owe me for helping them once," Nyan corrected.

"Oh, right, P2X-416--the place where Bedrosia and the Optricans were...well, I guess you don't need me to tell you," Jonas said. Nyan gaped at him. "I've been reading the mission reports," Jonas explained, as if everyone remembered details like that.

"Right," Nyan said, rolling his eyes. "But anyway, that won't protect me forever. Colonel O'Neill isn't very patient about mistakes. None of them is--they can't afford to be."

"So you don't like it? Why are you still on the team, then? I heard someone say you were leaving the SGC."

"_Someone_ has to do it," Nyan explained. "Anyone else would be trying to prove himself or work toward promotion, so they'd take more risks or question the SG-1 tactics more, and that's dangerous, especially if it distracts the main team. If I go with them and stay quiet...well, at least I'm not actively messing up." He sighed. "I just hope I stay not-dead long enough for them to find someone who can take my spot and actually wants it."

"Huh," Jonas said thoughtfully.

Nyan looked up and blinked. "Oh! Hey," he said, pointing at Jonas. "Are...are you thinking..."

Looking hopeful, Jonas said, "Are you?"

Nyan grinned. "Yeah. I'll see what I can do. The trick is to make sure they like you _first_, because then they'll train you and help you get better. If they don't like you to begin with, they'll just kick you off."

"Sounds fun," Jonas said.

...x...

"Major Carter, please move away," Nyan's voice said.

Daniel peeked around the hallway to find Sam standing in the doorway to Nyan's office while Nyan was clearly trying to get out, paper in hand.

She hesitated for a long moment, and then stepped aside. "Nyan," she said, "are you sure you want to do this?"

"_Yes_," Nyan said. "I'm just filing the paperwork now so you can start looking for potential replacements before I leave entirely." A little hesitantly, he added, "I was accepted to the University of Chicago. Classes start in the fall, and...and I'd like to go."

"Of course we wouldn't force you to stay if you don't want the job," Sam said, though she looked tired already at the idea of fielding new applicants for the position. "Uh, congratulations."

"I won't leave before you find someone else. But I'm not meant for SG-1."

"You're doing...you know...fine."

"I can't be Daniel," Nyan said.

Defensive, Sam said, "Well, no--we don't expect you to be."

"But you want me to be," Nyan said. When Sam's expression began to look guilty and she opened her mouth, he added, "It's okay. We all know it. But I _can't_."

She nodded, and even though the corridor was clear to let him pass, he didn't move. "Nyan, if we ever said anything that made you think we don't...value your skills or didn't want you on--"

"No," Nyan interrupted. "Mostly. No. Just... You all wait for him to finish your sentences. Colonel O'Neill doesn't make as many jokes anymore, because no one answers. I know--I keep expecting to hear him, too." He ducked his head. "I think you should find someone else. Maybe...it will be easier for you."

"I don't think it will be," she said quietly.

"Jonas wants to help," Nyan suggested.

"'Help' as in SG-1?" she said, looking skeptical.

Nyan shrugged. "He actually _wants_ to join a team. And he's really, really smart."

"I don't know..."

"Look," Nyan said bluntly, "no one is going to be Daniel. At least Jonas won't feel like he has to try."

Sam glanced to the side, toward Daniel's--Jonas's--office. "Maybe," she said reluctantly. "We'll see."

...x...

"Seen enough?" Oma said.

"No," Daniel said, not turning to see her and instead watching Nyan explain to Jonas the requirements for joining a team.

"I think you've seen enough," she said.

"I don't," Daniel said.

There was a pause, during which Daniel imagined Oma Desala trying her very best to restrain herself from slapping him over the head. "Too bad," she said, and yanked him away.

XXXXX

"There's something you need to see," Oma said when she appeared next to him.

"What?" he said apprehensively, looking around to find himself in his library.

"I don't think you understand the consequences of crossing the Others," she said. Daniel finally looked up at her. She disappeared for a moment, then reappeared in a bright flash that made him move back, and then--

XXXXX

"Why are we on Abydos?" Daniel said when he recognized where she had taken him. This wasn't Nagada--it was relatively far from there, a place where some of the migrant tribes often came to trade--but when he looked around, she was nowhere to be seen. "Oma?"

Someone screamed. Daniel turned until he could see a woman pulling a child along behind her as she ran. And then he looked again and saw more and more--the entire settlement was panicking, a few men and women packing and others running, running...running from--

A prickle made him turn away again, until he saw the approaching cloud of dust and sand blowing violently toward the people, followed by an angry, dark storm cloud. They weren't going to make it--or, if they did survive, their belongings, their livelihood, their homes and food would be lost. This was Nature at its fiercest, and that wasn't something that could be fought.

Unless...

"Oma!" Daniel yelled into the gale. No one answered. "You can save them!"

But even Mother Nature was only a name she had taken on; if she could do it, surely he could, too. Daniel stood in front of the storm and could feel the charged atmosphere, could _see_ every individual speck of dust and the lightning forming behind it, and because he knew, he could make it all stop--

Oma appeared beside him, and his control broke, like a taut string suddenly cut. "What--what are you doing?" he said as the storm front moved past him. From within the gale itself, Daniel watched Abydons abandoning their homes. "Oma, you can't do this--"

"_You_ can't do this," she countered. Daniel closed his eyes and tried again, but Oma understood this world and its rules so much better than he; as soon as he started, she stopped him.

"Oma, please," he begged as lightning struck. A tent in the distance was burning already. "You can't just let them die!"

She didn't answer.

"Don't punish them to teach me a lesson!" he yelled, wishing he could grab her and shake her.

"Why not?" she said sharply. "The Others would."

"I thought you weren't like them," he said.

_Run, run_, someone yelled. _Go, keep running, don't stop, leave it, run_.

Making up his mind, he tried to leave, to get away from her until he could do _something_, and she pulled him back to watch. "This is not my doing," she said, evenly, easily audible even over the sound of wind and scraping sand and screaming as he struggled to free himself from her. "But neither is it mine to end."

It was hours before it was over.

Some of the people had made it into a nearby cave; others hadn't and were being pulled in now to be treated as well as was possible when everything had been lost. It didn't really matter, though; the tents they had used for shelter were gone, and so were most of the animals, the food, the water. The closest town was Badari, on the river, and most of these people wouldn't make it there before they died--of thirst, for many, or from the heat sickness, or from some injury or infection.

"How...how could..." Daniel said, drained and tired in a way he hadn't felt since he had lost his physical form. "Oma..."

"You are not their god, Daniel Jackson," she said, toneless and expressionless. "Nor am I."

"We could have saved them," he said. _Like we could have saved Kelowna_, he wanted to say.

"And what would happen," she said, "when this planet--where false gods are no longer welcome--began to stir with word that the gods have returned, especially after the talk that your Ascension caused? What would happen when this tribe met another storm--would they be careless? Would they stand in front and pray to their savior?"

"They would be _alive_," he said.

"The host to a Goa'uld is alive," she said.

"I'm not a Goa'uld!" he shouted at her. "I'm not controlling them! Goa'ulded hosts--it's their body and the Goa'uld have no right to them!"

"And this is their world," Oma said, sweeping a hand out to encompass everyone. "You have no right to it. Even the Asgard, who themselves are worshipped as gods, do not interfere in natural occurrences. The Goa'uld are false gods, and if you continue this path, then so are you."

Daniel watched a little boy who had been scraped half-raw, coughing raggedly into someone's torn robes. "But we could have saved them," he whispered.

Oma didn't answer at first. When she did, she said, in an odd voice, "And what about these?"

All at once, the sound of a hundred dying breaths filled Daniel's ears. He felt himself shudder as a hundred on Abydos breathed their last.

"Or these?" Oma continued, and Daniel clamped his hands instinctively over his ears in a mannerism his mind hadn't yet forgotten, as he heard a thousand, a billion, countless people dying on countless planets...

Form disappeared as he was drawn into the enmeshed _everything_ that he still hadn't quite learned to deal with. Struggling to hold himself in one peace and not be drowned by everything else, he tried to close his eyes and instead saw a dizzying whirl of images speed past him. There was a war in one country, a plague overtaking another; a father murdered in his bed, a child drowning in a river, a mother crying as her village was ransacked; humans, Asgard, Unas, species he didn't even recognize, but all people nonetheless, screaming in pain, in anger, in grief, in wars, in sickness--

It wasn't until he was pulled back from them with a jolt that he realized he was screaming along with them.

"I'm sorry, Daniel," Oma whispered. The sound of death faded from his ears, warmth enveloped him, and the white of her robe filled his eyes. "It's gone now. Look at me." He quieted, but it felt like whatever it was that made him who he was in the absence of a body was trembling, unsteady. He looked at her. "I'm sorry," she repeated.

"I don't want to watch," he said. "Please?"

"We'll go now," she said, her expression once again gentle, the face of the mother to whom he had given his baby brother. "It's all right. Come with me."

XXXXX

"It's like that all the time for you?" Daniel said quietly when she brought him back to Kheb.

She was watching him carefully. "Everyone needs time to adjust to what we can do--what we can see, what we can hear," she said. "I should not have forced that on you before you were ready. I opened you to pain, because I was trying to make a point, but if you truly look at everything, you will see great beauty as well."

"You've been...blocking it for me?" he said.

"Not quite," she said. "You are still only beginning to understand the scope of what you can see. Until you can truly see all of it, you are your own barrier."

"I've been trying," he said dully.

She offered him a smile. "A year, five years, five hundred...that's nothing to the Others. You need time. The Others understand that, too, and that's why they don't punish harshly for the small mistakes that everyone makes in the beginning. At least...not if I do it for them."

Daniel fell silent and stared at the candles she had lit around her temple. Like so much else here, they were set in some pattern that he could recognize as a pattern but not quite understand.

"Do you ever wonder, Daniel," Oma said, "how your life would have changed if I--or one of the Others--had chosen to interfere when Apophis attacked Abydos? I assure you, I have kept aware of news of the Goa'uld, and I would have picked your side as the one that seemed most right in that instance. What would have happened then?"

With a sinking feeling, Daniel said, "My parents would be alive. So would Bolaa, Ide, Mriyu. My brother wouldn't have been Goa'ulded and forced to lead Jaffa armies. My sister wouldn't have been made Apophis's queen. And I..."

"You wouldn't have been captured and then taken to the SGC," Oma finished. "Even if the Stargate had remained open, you wouldn't have left your home then, not for months, probably years, if ever. When was Hathor's attempted invasion of Tau'ri?"

"A...few months after Apophis went to Abydos."

"After you went to the SGC. If you hadn't been on Earth, researching your late parents with the help of Tau'ri technology, would it have been too late before anyone tried to stop Hathor?"

Daniel pulled himself tighter, feeling like a ball of disperse energy that he wanted to make smaller. "That wasn't...someone else might have found out and stopped her."

"Perhaps," Oma agreed. "We can't know. But even if the SGC survived Hathor, if you hadn't been on the planet of the Unas with SG-11, Robert Rothman might not have died." Daniel shrank himself down further. Oma turned to look at him. "And if he hadn't died, there wouldn't have been a funeral only minutes away from where Osiris was rising to power. Without the SGC, exactly the way it has been these last years, the galaxy would be...different."

"I would have done anything," he said, and wasn't sure if he meant anything to save his parents, or to keep Abydos in its safe bubble of the galaxy, or to stop Robert from dying for him, or any of a hundred other things.

"And now you could," she said. "Now, it would be easy, and that is why you must not. The Others could have saved your parents that day, Daniel, and the SGC might have been lost. The SGC has helped billions of people and caused the destruction of billions of others, some of them allies. If we were to choose--the individuals for millions, or one solar system for another, how could we decide one was worth more?"

"You couldn't," Daniel said. The SGC had done a lot of good, but they'd also caused a lot of pain--there was no way for the Others to judge its worth, much less predict what it would be worth even before it had started. And that was only one thing, stemming from one decision on one day on Abydos. There was so much more, if only he opened his mind enough to see...

Steeling himself, he let himself fade into the lower planes, merging into everything, straining to see--

"No," Oma said sternly. "Don't."

Ignoring her, Daniel called back to mind the feeling of watching millions of people die and spread himself as far as he could imagine, forcing himself to see everything and everyone in his view, all at once, all the dying and fighting and laughing and playing and living--

Oma pulled him back just as he felt himself about to teeter off some edge he hadn't realized existed.

"I have to see," he explained unsteadily, the screams of pain and of laughter still ringing in his mind. "I have to know what's there. I can see so much, and--"

"You could _change_ so much," she said.

"If the Others helped, then if we made a mistake--if one action led to something worse--we could fix it. We have the power to fix things."

Oma shook her head. "What would life mean, then, if people were nothing but pawns to be manipulated by those like us? As you are now, you could see it all, destroy it all, remake it all exactly the way you want it."

Daniel looked down at the lower plane, focusing when he saw a Jaffa First Prime about to execute a rebel soldier. "I could change it," he said.

"Would you?"

He flinched as the staff weapon discharged and wondered what would have happened if that particular rebel had lived. Nothing, maybe; or maybe he would have been another Teal'c or Rak'nor, a leader, or maybe a traitor to the cause. Maybe he'd had a family, or close brothers-in-arms. It mattered to _someone_. "I dreamed once that I would change everything," Daniel said.

"Shifu's lesson wasn't your dream," Oma said. "It was your nightmare."

"But how do I know where to stop?" he said, pulling back to look at her. "How do I know what's crossing a line?"

She shook her head. "You can't, because there is no line. Once you start meddling, there will always be a reason--an excuse--to do just a little more."

"So we do nothing," Daniel said, dejected.

"Everyone feels as you do in the beginning," she said. "It is that purity of intention that has brought you here, but here, you must gain understanding. You may have good intentions, but that means nothing to those who suffer the consequences. If you had been on the mortal plane and knew that other beings were taking your free will from you in order to do what they considered 'right,' you would have fought against that, wouldn't you?"

He felt himself nod. Choices were important. He would have fought to the death for the right to his own will. "I can never save them all, can I?"

"We try to maintain balance. If we tip that, it would destroy all we have striven to do. That is all we can do."

"You saved me," Daniel said. "I was only one person, but you saved me."

"And for that, I am an exile," she pointed out. "I help those who desire Ascension, but I'm limited to those who seek me out. Even then, I do not help people Ascend without knowing their soul. There are too many who need help, and I can't help them all at once."

"So I'm your newest project," he said.

"I chose you, Daniel Jackson," Oma said, "because I saw your potential."

"I haven't done very well so far," he said.

"You...are an arrogant, impatient child," she said, but almost fondly. "And even if you do nothing for the greater good, then I will have helped a good soul toward peace."

"I want to help people," he said. "I only...I thought I could do more here."

She tilted her head to catch his eyes when he started to look down again. "Life is for the living," she said. "Their world is theirs, not ours to play with. But when they pass from one realm to another..._that_ is in our power to ease. Do not underestimate the value of that last kindness. You can choose to save a life, Daniel, or you can choose to save a soul."

XXXXX

Anubis finally attacked Earth directly, as they had been warned. What they _hadn't_ expected was that the attack would come through the Stargate--that Anubis would have somehow built a weapon that could destroy Earth by catastrophically destroying its Stargate.

Daniel didn't worry (much). This was the kind of thing at which his team and the rest of the SGC excelled. Jonas Quinn, in fact, was the one who came up with an idea to launch the overheating Stargate into space to save Earth. Sam figured out how to do it, Jack flew the X-302 to carry it out, and Teal'c recruited Bra'tac and his own son to help destroy the weapon Anubis was using. Nyan looked like he wasn't sure whether to feel left out or relieved.

Dr. McKay probably helped a lot, with the calculating thing, but mostly he complained and suggested things like sacrificing Jack just because it might save most of the rest of the world. The look on Sam's face said that idea was ludicrous, especially when they weren't going to _give up on him yet, McKay; we still have other options._

McKay's response to this was something like, _No you don't, you blonde bimbo_. Sam pointed out that McKay's solution had almost blown them all up even without Goa'uld help and that they could still ship him back to Siberia if he didn't have anything productive to add.

Jonas seemed to agree with her sentiment, and then he blurted 'naquadria' and said something like, _if this goes wrong the world will explode, but if it doesn't, Colonel O'Neill will live, and so will everyone else (probably)._ That seemed to be all Sam needed to get back to work.

Well, as long as Nyan was scheming to get Jonas to take his place, Daniel decided the Kelownan would fit in just fine with SG-1. Sam was even beaming at him, which could only be a good sign.

...x...

The SGC might have prevailed against Anubis, but there was still something wrong about all of it. What bothered Daniel the most was _how_ Anubis had done it; it didn't make sense.

"I don't suppose I'm allowed to just ask him how he's doing it," Daniel said the next time he saw Oma.

"No," she said. "Don't worry about Anubis."

"How can I _not_ worry about Anubis?" he said. "He wiped out the Tollan, he got me killed, he tortured Thor, and he tried to destroy Earth at least twice so far, and once more indirectly. Maybe even more than that, if there's an incident I've missed."

"Don't worry about him, because you can't do anything about him," she said. "This isn't one of _my_ rules, Daniel. The Others will stop you if you try, and then we'll be left with Anubis still free while you're lost to us."

Daniel sighed. "Well, I'm going to look, anyway," he said.

"Anubis is personal," she said. "There's no reason to tempt yourself."

That sounded suspiciously like '_I don't trust you_,' but sometimes Daniel wasn't sure he should trust himself in that way, either. "I'll go look at something else, then," he decided, "and I'm not going to avoid Anubis forever. I won't let him see me, okay?" He left before she could answer.

...x...

While looking around, he found Nirrti performing more genetic experiments, the kind she had done on the people of Cassandra's planet. Bastet was feuding with Morrigan again, but neither of the armies seemed to think it would last long.

Yu was...in his sarcophagus, interestingly. Daniel waited for him to come out, curious about what he was doing, but it was a _long_ time and Yu only came out once, and then only for a very unproductive few hours in which he grumbled a lot and then went back to sleep. With a suspicion blooming, Daniel walked through Yu's homeworld, listening to the gossip about senility among his Jaffa and storing the rumors away for future reference.

He could feel Oma watching him even more than usual, so he didn't go directly to Anubis and instead went exploring around the ruins of the weapon Rya'c had destroyed.

"Huh," he said aloud as he examined the technology. He snooped curiously around the rest of the base, carefully looking at everything Anubis had been doing before he left and wandered toward Earth again instead.

XXXXX

As Nyan had promised, Jonas was very smart.

He wasn't simply reading everything; he remembered it, too. If he didn't always pull conclusions together as effortlessly as Daniel had, he also didn't make as many rash mistakes, and his eye for detail was flawless and his memory near-perfect. It wasn't long before he began volunteering to fill in when a team was missing a scientist, the way most civilians did before securing a permanent field position. His academic background and ability to learn quickly meant that he wasn't as expert in theoretical physics as Sam and not as good at translating Ancient Egyptian as Nyan, but he was decent enough at both to be useful in more than a few situations.

And he _loved_ it. Daniel was pretty sure no one grinned as much as Jonas did.

Then again, it was possible Jonas's smiles were meant partly to disarm. It made Sam warm to him: he followed her science well enough, and he filled silences in the lab with harmless musing and grins until she decided it was okay to like him and smiled back. Teal'c mostly ignored him, perhaps a little wary of the cheeriness, but Jonas kept talking at him while training in the gym, so Daniel suspected it wouldn't be long before _he_ cracked, too.

Jack was a bit of a problem. He stopped scowling at Jonas, as much as Jack ever stopped scowling at scientists, but he didn't know the man, and Jack didn't trust aliens he didn't know. Jack didn't trust _anyone_ he didn't know, but being an alien didn't help.

"Give it time," Nyan told Jonas.

"I don't have to join SG-1," Jonas said. "There are other teams with openings."

Nyan grimaced. "You probably don't realize it, but they--all of them--like you a lot more than most other potential fourths. Just keep the possibility open, okay?"

It was good, Daniel decided. SG-1 needed a fourth, Nyan wanted off, and Jonas wanted on. It would be fine. He was happy for them.


	5. Part II: Ascension, 4 of 4

**Part II (cont'd)**

"Tired of watching your friends?" Oma said.

Daniel shrugged, staring at the now-inactive Ancient repository of knowledge on P3R-272. "I _was_ watching," he said absently. "They were rescuing Thor from a computer in a Goa'uld mothership. Even Jacob and Lantash, Major Davis, and Jonas got to play."

"I must not have been paying attention to that part," she said. "A Goa'uld mothership?"

"Mm-hm. I didn't realize how much time Major Davis must spend studying Goa'uld technology, because he's pretty good." She raised her eyebrow, and he added, "Jonas isn't bad, either. He's quick." He'd gotten a little anxious when they'd first found signs of Jaffa guarding the ship, but he'd handled himself decently without getting in the way of the action. "I think even Jack's warming to him."

"Perhaps that's because Jonas Quinn doesn't argue when he's given an order."

"He'll learn," Daniel assured her. "They're doing okay for now."

"How is that friend of yours, the former Tok'ra host?"

Surprised, he said, "Martouf? You... Exactly how much attention do you pay the SGC?"

"I watched you die," she reminded him. "He and his symbiote were involved in those events, if indirectly. You rarely mention him when you talk to me."

"Oh," he said. He looked away from the repository he had been studying just long enough to check and see that Martouf's condition was still unchanged. "I guess...there's not a lot _to_ mention. To be honest, I think that five years ago he would have chosen death over some...some suspended life in which he's had too much brain trauma to remember the last two years and is starting to suffer from a lot of other physical problems, too."

"I'm sorry to hear that," Oma said.

Daniel turned to her. "Why does that happen, anyway? Having a symbiote would have prevented him from most illnesses, but why is he getting so much sicker so quickly?"

She started to answer, then gestured with a hand. "Can you see for yourself? Everything in a human's body is matter and energy. If he is struggling with memories, even those are also simply the result of certain material configurations that allow for correct passage of signals."

Focusing, Daniel dropped onto Earth again and looked more closely at Martouf as the man slept. Then he looked closer, and closer, and closer until--

"There are...tangles in his brain," Daniel said, intrigued. "It's like...like his brain's not as _full_ as it should be." Oma nodded. "And most of his organs aren't as strong as they need to be."

"That can come with age as extreme as his," she told him. "Some of it is because his body has undergone a lot of trauma that he has always been able to rely on a symbiote to hold at bay."

"He's sad," Daniel said, peeking into the man's confused dreams. "Can I fix him?"

Oma touched his arm, and suddenly, they were back on the Ancient planet where she had met him minutes ago.

"You could, yes," she said. "The science of the mind is one that even the Tok'ra have not mastered, but reforming connections, restoring or removing or altering memories...that is relatively easy for us."

Daniel touched a finger to the Ancient repository and sighed. "But if I did...what makes him more deserving of being cured, yes? Even his age isn't artificial; he's naturally that old."

"So what will you do?" she said.

"_Yi shay_." Daniel stepped back and determinedly refocused on the technology of the Ancient repository of knowledge again. "I won't do it. Do I pass your test?"

"I wish I could help," Oma said, sounding sincere, but her tone said, _'yes.'_

"Anyway. I guess my friends don't need me haunting every step. That's what I was doing here."

There was a short silence, and then, "Something caught your attention and made you stop moping about on Earth? Quick now, tell me--I have to remember it for next time."

"I wasn't moping," he retorted.

"What _are_ you doing here?" she said.

"This was made for humans," he said, examining the device in the wall.

"Yes, Daniel, it was," she said, in a tone that strongly implied she would have been rolling her eyes behind his back if she hadn't been incorporeal and lacking in actual eyes.

"But why?" he said.

"So foolish colonels could have their heads sucked," she said.

It didn't surprise him anymore--or even bother him much, honestly--that she knew so much about him. That was the way of things here.

"It was sort of the opposite of sucking," Daniel said, remembering something Robert had said about it once. "Un-sucking. Downloading."

"Is there a point to this latest trip of yours?" Oma said.

"I don't know," he said. She sighed. "I didn't make you come, Oma," he pointed out.

"Why are you so interested in the Ancients these days?" she asked.

He tried looking into the viewer again, and again, nothing happened. "Something about Anubis's weapon just reminded me of..." ..._Ancient technology_, he almost said, but stopped. It was a ridiculous thing to say, given that he wasn't any sort of expert on Ancient technology, but he was sure that was right, anyway. There was something about Ancient work that tingled at the back of his mind, like the answer to a puzzle he couldn't put together just yet.

"You spent so much time flitting from planet to planet in every universe I could find," she said, "and suddenly you only care about ones where the Ancients left traces behind?"

"Well, that's not very hard," he said. "The Ancients left bits of stuff everywhere--configured, by the way, for humans to stumble on and accidentally get their brains scrambled. But there's no trace of _them_," he went on, building steam. "Bodies, anecdotal--or written--evidence of descendants, uh, uh...no people who know how to use their technology, no way to trace any sort of logical evolution of their writing system to modern writing, despite the fact that their language is clearly a precursor to the Tau'ri reconstruction of Proto-Italic and the fact that, if my theories were right, they interacted with Tau'ri humans in the form of gods long after they disappeared everywhere else. They're just...gone."

When he turned around, Oma raised her eyebrows. "Ah," she said. "Is that all?"

"Also," Daniel said, pointing to the circular inscription on the ground, "I can read that."

"Congratulations," she said dryly. "I know how you've always longed to be literate."

"It's Ancient," he said, determined to be as unfazed by her as she was by him. "I know what it says. And it's not just because Jack once...told me what it says."

"You studied Ancient for years," she pointed out.

"It's more than that. I wasn't _fluent_ in Ancient. But this...it's like... See, a simple translation, like the kind I used to churn out for Ancient, will give you one meaning of a word or a phrase, and even that doesn't often cover it fully. But now, I _know_ all the secondary meanings, the connotations, the implications...just by looking. It feels easy. I feel like I've been speaking Ancient all my life." He grinned. "I love being able to understand so much."

"Hm," Oma said.

"Well?" he said.

"What," she said, "you can't figure it out on your own?"

"Yes I can," he said quickly, then, "What?"

She raised an eyebrow. "I could tell you everything I know about the Ancients," she said.

"Wait, wait...no," Daniel said, excited at the idea of an intellectual challenge that he could actually figure out on his own, this time, with a combination of study, research, observations, and thinking. "I'll figure it out."

Oma shrugged. "Okay," she said. "Besides, even if you _did_ want me to tell you--and even if _I _wanted to--I suspect the Others don't want that."

"Why wouldn't the Others want me to know about the Ancients?" Daniel said, confused and not a bit indignant.

"Think about what the SGC has found left behind by the Ancients," Oma said. "Do you want someone with impure intentions understanding so much about such a powerful people?"

"I don't have impure intentions," he said.

"Think of this as your probation period," she said, kindly not mentioning Kelowna or the shouting matches they'd had in the past.

"How long will that last?" he said.

"How long do you have?" she said. "Oh, that's right--an eternity."

"Wh--well, but, wait--"

"Don't worry," she said. "I'm sure the Others will start trusting you before you hit infinity...that is, if you show yourself capable of a modicum self-control between now and then."

...x...

Despite being among a collective of energy-beings who apparently knew everything, as far as Daniel could tell, he found very little information about the Ancients, which seemed to confirm Oma's words that the Others didn't want him to know.

Somehow, Daniel found himself constantly diverted when he tried to slip into a world that might have been dominated by Ancients, and there wasn't much on the Ancients that Daniel could find in his room of books that never ended. Rather, there was a lot of vague history, and all of it stopped before the Ancients disappeared off the face of the galaxy.

And then, he took a peek on Earth, only to find that SG-1 had discovered an Ancient--a real, _live_ Ancient called Ayiana--where the Antarctica 'gate had been buried. That was when he learned that Ancients were human, or at least very human_oid_.

"I guess that explains why their technology all seems to have been made for humans," he said to Shifu, who had come along to watch with him.

And then, Jack got sick with some Ancient illness that no one could heal.

"I could heal him," Daniel said.

"No," Shifu said, and even though he still appeared to Daniel as a small boy, there was no mistaking which of them had more authority and more power here.

Of course not. Daniel knew it, too. "But it's Jack," he still said.

But Shifu only turned to him with eyes that looked like Oma's, even though they were the color of Sha'uri's, and said, "No, Daniel. Do not ask to do what you already know is wrong."

It wasn't fair, Daniel thought, that he'd lost his life but the thought of his friends' dying could still make him feel as if he still had a heart pounding mercilessly in his chest. "Then Jack's going to die," he said.

"If he dies," Shifu says, "it is only the beginning of another journey."

A thought struck him. "Could I Ascend him?" Daniel said. "He's a good person, Shifu. He's done so many good things--he has a good soul."

"He also has the right predisposition."

Daniel frowned. "He has what?"

Shifu tilted his head. "Physically. Genetically. It is not necessary, but it brings him closer to the first step."

"What..."

"If Jack O'Neill possesses the willingness to Ascend," Shifu said, "then I myself will help you to help him. But be certain, my brother, that you are offering this for the sake of Jack O'Neill, and not because you long for his company again."

"I wouldn't want him to die just so I won't be lonely," he said defensively, except there was a piece of him that would have called that a silver lining to the cloud of Jack's death.

"I know that," Shifu said. "And Daniel...look."

So Daniel turned back to the scene. "He...he's taking a Tok'ra symbiote so it'll heal him," he said, stunned. "What? _Jack_?"

Shifu nodded. "Have faith in them, brother. Their problems are theirs to solve, but they are well able to solve them without help from above."

Daniel was still staring, though, disturbed. "Do you think he's okay?" he asked.

"He will be healed," Shifu said simply. "He is taking the symbiote."

"That's my point--he's actually _taking a symbiote_," Daniel said, reminded that being wise didn't mean a person was all-knowing. Shifu didn't know Jack.

"That is good, is it not?" Shifu said. He looked up. "Come. We have lingered here quite long already."

Staying alive was good, Daniel told himself, and it wasn't like they were talking about implantation with a random Goa'uld; it was a Tok'ra. Jack would be fine.

XXXXX

There was no way to match a myth to Ayiana, since Daniel didn't know her real name. The first name of an Ancient he stumbled across in a book, in fact, wasn't Ayiana but rather Myrddin. Finding in a second book that Myrddin had been a madman who might have had the power of prophecy, though, was not particularly helpful.

It took an embarrassing amount of time--and another name that had later been conflated with Myrddin's--to link the name to Tau'ri legend. Camelot had been relatively late in Earth's history compared to what Daniel usually expected from aliens, so it wasn't something he had studied extensively, but he could hardly have lived on Earth for five years without having at least heard a little of the stories, especially when he'd spent so much time in libraries of ancient texts.

It was also through studies of Camelot that he began to meet some of the Others.

For a long time, Oma and Shifu had been the only ones who sought him out. But once he had started reading quietly instead of constantly sticking his glowing nose into mortals' business, he found himself occasionally looking up to see one or two Others sitting near the corner of his room, reading quietly and never so much as acknowledging his presence. Daniel suspected they were still watching him to make sure he behaved.

"She wasn't a fairy, you know," someone said one day.

Daniel looked up and found a woman with dark hair watching him from where she sat at another desk. "What?" he said, surprised that someone was talking to him.

She nodded at the book he was reading. "Morgan. Morgan Le Fay, according to that book you're reading. And Merlin wasn't a wizard, either, except metaphorically."

A little bemused but not bothering to wonder how the woman knew what he was doing, he said, "No, I...didn't think Merlin was an actual, magical wizard, or that Morgan was a fairy, 'le fay' or not. It was probably a convenient explanation for the things they did, though."

The woman folded her hands on the desk and turned toward him. "Such as...?"

He looked around, wondering if there was someone else there--Oma, maybe, or even one of the Others--then shrugged. "Well, Merlin was an Ancient, as far as I can tell, and I'd guess that Morgan was one, too. I just found out that the Ancients were essentially human, and while I don't understand everything about them and their race, it seems they worked most of their 'magic' through technology."

"Not an inaccurate assessment," the woman said.

When she only continued to stare at him, Daniel said, "Sorry--who are you?"

The woman smiled and stood up, making her way to join him at the table where he sat. "My name is Ganos Lal. I know who you are, Daniel Jackson," she added when he started to introduce himself.

Daniel was feeling impulsive after a very long time of speaking to no one but Oma and Shifu and knowing no one else wanted to speak to him, so he answered, "You know, when I was alive, I could never figure out whether it was a good or bad thing when people said that, but now, I'm pretty sure people mostly know me because they're annoyed at me."

Perhaps Ganos Lal found his frustration as funny as he found it frustrating, because her smile seemed to grow warmer. "And here you are," she said, "reading about Morgan, of all people."

He shrugged. "Morgan's interesting. Besides, I'm having some trouble, but I've been trying to pick out names of people who might have been Ancients."

Ganos Lal tilted her head. "What do you mean?" she asked.

"I think the Others aren't letting me see everything I'm trying to see," he explained, "which means I have search through Tau'ri legends that they don't have any reason to stop me from seeing since I'm sort of Tau'ri by adoption and could've read those in life--"

"I meant about Morgan, child," she said.

"That's another thing," Daniel said. "Do you know how long I worked to stop people from calling me 'child?'"

"Only a child could call a handful of years a long time," Ganos Lal countered.

Daniel snorted. "This is what happens when I get stuck with a plane full of very old people."

Then he froze, and if he had had a flesh-and-blood tongue, he would have bitten it. Ganos Lal smiled even wider.

"Uh," he coughed. "Not that you're...well, chronologically, you _are_ old. Which is a...a good thing, in your case, being...incorporeal and wise and all, and not senile."

Ganos Lal stood, still amused. "You have a right to your opinions, Daniel Jackson," she said. "Good day, and good fortune to you in your studies. Perhaps," she added, pulling a book from the shelf that he was sure he'd never seen before, "this will help you."

"Are the Others okay with your giving me information?" Daniel said, both itching to take it and also reluctant to get someone else on the Others' bad side.

"It's simply another account of Morgan's time," Ganos Lal said, still holding out the book. "There are no great secrets in here, but you may find her stories--and those of Merlin--very interesting."

Daniel accepted it. "Thank you," he said sincerely.

...x...

"I don't want you talking to her," Oma said as soon as Ganos Lal had disappeared.

Daniel raised his eyebrows. "You're...kidding, right?"

"Ganos Lal is one of the Others," she insisted. "Do you know the first thing about her?"

"She was just talking about Morgan le Fay," he said.

"_Morgan_," Oma said, shaking her head. "She would."

"Uh...why?" Daniel said.

"Daniel, this wouldn't be the first time the Others have sent her to watch someone whom they think might be causing trouble," she said.

"Wh...I...I was reading a book," he said, annoyed because he had finally met someone else who seemed interesting and interested in talking to him, and she might turn out to have been pretending. "I'm not doing _anything_ for once, and you think the Others picked now to send a spy to watch me? The Others have _spies_?"

"Just remember that you're not the only one at risk if they catch you doing anything," she said.

"Look," he said, "I'm not exactly eager to be punished by the Others. I won't do anything you wouldn't do."

"That is the most ridiculous thing I've heard since the last time I talked to you."

"Oh, come on. _Now_ what is it you think I'm going to do?" he said, and as soon as he saw her slight hesitation, he said, "What? What happened?"

She glanced at a nearby table, where one memo's urgent words caught his attention.

"Colonel Jack O'Neill of SG-1 has been captured by Ba'al," he read with a sinking feeling of dread as he plucked the sheet up and stared at it. "Location unknown...status of symbiote Kanan unknown...motive unknown..."

"Read on," she said.

Surprised at her encouragement but needing no further prodding, Daniel skimmed the neatly-worded report until he saw the words _'torture'_ and '_sarcophagus_.'

"Do you understand what that sarcophagus will do?" Oma said, ripping his attention away and back to her. "You understand what happens to a man when he's tortured to death over and over, only to be revived each time in a device that slowly poisons his soul?"

"Yes," he said, and the feeling of apprehension began to blossom into something much, much worse. "Oma..."

"What?" she said, but with an intensity that meant she had an idea of what he was going to say but she wanted him to say it.

"Ba'al," he said. "I could--"

"No," she said. "You won't touch him."

"But--"

"Find another way," she said.

Daniel resisted the temptation to kick his desk. "I could... SG-1 doesn't know where he is," he said, staring at the report. "'Location unknown.' If I told them--"

"No," she said. "Look at where he's being kept."

It only took a moment to see that the place was impenetrable. There was no way SG-1--or even two, or five, or all the SG teams--could get in, much less achieve their objective and come out alive. He thought he might have risked it, and so would Sam and Teal'c, and maybe even Jonas, but the general would never approve that kind of mission. "If I told them where he is," he said, "and then helped them--"

"No," Oma repeated.

"Then he's going to die!" Daniel said.

"Yes," she said, making him fall silent. "Barring some fate that I cannot see at this moment--and which neither of us has the right to force--he will die."

"I don't accept that," he said.

She turned her coolest look upon him. "Why not? Because you'll--"

"Because he's _Jack_," Daniel snapped. "Because there's always another way, and I'm not talking about intervention from people like us."

"How?" she said.

He scanned over the information he had one more time. "I don't know," he admitted. "Yet."

"I don't see another way," Oma said. "Jack O'Neill will be killed. And then he will be revived and killed again, until there is nothing left to revive." It would destroy his mind and everything that made Jack who he was outside the boundaries of flesh. And this time, there was nothing Daniel could do about it.

Except...

"Why?" he asked. "What does Ba'al want with him?"

But Oma shook her head. "I don't know. Do you have any idea?"

Daniel shook his head, too. "Maybe Jack knows. Maybe...I could help him figure out why? Just guide him through his thoughts."

She studied him for a moment, then nodded. "Do not touch Ba'al, do not tell the SGC where he is, and do not leave any physical trace of your presence, or the Others will stop you and Jack O'Neill will be left to suffer. They will use his suffering as your punishment, Daniel, and I will not intervene, do you understand me?"

"Talking," Daniel promised quickly. "That's it. I won't touch him, I won't fight Ba'al, I won't do anything but...but offer a friend some comfort."

"Go," she said.

XXXXX

There were rules to this. Oma had laid them out for him very clearly, and the ultimate message seemed to be that the more he wanted to interfere, the more he needed to handicap himself to limits approaching those of humans so that the interference seemed less like interference. He could slip into the cell to see Jack, but under no circumstances could he slip Jack out. He could talk to Jack and make suggestions, but he couldn't take any direct action to affect Jack's state of existence, whether it was to be death or otherwise.

So Daniel was waiting impatiently inside Ba'al's cell instead of doing something useful when Jack was tossed back inside.

"Oy," Jack said hoarsely when he'd landed.

"Jack," Daniel said, and couldn't believe how good it felt to say it and know that Jack heard him.

As it turned out, Jack was still a little unsteady--and fighting a bit of a high from the sarcophagus, if the look in his eyes was anything to go by--so he nearly overbalanced when he whirled around. "Daniel?" he breathed.

Daniel managed a smile. "Hi, Jack."

This didn't seem to explain anything, and Jack repeated, "_Daniel_?"

"I go away, and look what happens," he said, amazed that he didn't sound as excited or maybe horrified as he actually was.

Jack gave him a suspicious look and, without taking his eyes away, sat down across from him.

Calm. That was a rule, too. Daniel had thought that was some stupid thing Oma and the Others insisted on to make themselves look enlightened and unflustered, but he could see, too, that it was necessary. Now was not the time to be panicking or angry or frustrated; someone needed to be calm for Jack.

"It's good to see you," Daniel said.

"Yeah...you too," Jack said. "It's a shame you're part of a delusion."

"Jack," Daniel chastened, and wished that Jack weren't in the process of being repeatedly tortured to death, because he missed this kind of stupid, circular conversation they had had all the time. "I'm really here. Actually, I'd have thought it would be easier to convince you, after all the things we've seen that--"

Jack threw a shoe at him.

Daniel watched the shoe tumble to the ground. "You could've just told me to shut up," he said.

"I just tossed my shoe through you," Jack said, with the deliberateness of someone trying very hard to stay focused and in control of his own mind.

"Well, it's not like we've never been immaterial before," Daniel pointed out. "And that was _before_ I became energy and Ascended to another plane of existence, so..."

Jack's dulled eyes lit up very slightly. "Oh..." he said, looking torn between hope that this was real and fear that he was making it up after all. "_Oh_."

"It's really me, Jack," he said. "You know. Without the body, but still me."

The first thing Jack said was, "Are you okay?"

"I'm, uh. I'm good," Daniel said, nodding determinedly. "Fine. But I'm not here for me--how are _you_?"

Shrugging, Jack said, "Well, you know. Getting killed and brought back to life...takes time for the color to come back."

Bravado. Daniel had hidden his fear behind a screen of curiosity and frantic thoughts, and Jack always did this. "You don't have to pretend with me," he said. "About anything. I know this has been...uh...terrible."

"All right," Jack said, with the air of someone who only cared a little bit, because he wasn't sure that he wasn't insane. "So since you're really here, do your thing--bust me outta here."

"Well...I can't," Daniel said.

"Darn," Jack said, snapping his fingers. "I was hoping I'd make up a better excuse."

"Jack, I'm _really_ not a hallucination--"

"Then _why_ can't you?" Jack said.

"I'm not allowed to interfere," he said.

He was so used to that concept these days that, while it still chafed, it didn't feel quite so ridiculous anymore. The expression on Jack's face--like he wanted to scoff but was too tired to do so--reminded him of the part he hated about Ascension. "You're interfering now," Jack said.

"No, I'm not," Daniel said quickly.

"Yes, you are," Jack said.

"No, I'm...I'm sitting with a friend," he said.

"Interfering," Jack pointed out.

"There are, uh...sort of like loopholes," Daniel said, feeling stupid. "But they're really small holes, and the Others...watch the...you know...loopholes. Really closely."

"You are _so_ not enlightened," Jack informed him.

"That's...it's...it's complicated," he said.

The look Jack gave him in return was scornful and a bit incredulous, with just enough betrayal and resignation that it hurt, too. "Can't you...zap all of these guys? Like that thing on Kheb? What good's all that if you can't spring an old friend out of jail?"

"I can't," he repeated. "I mean...I can, technically, but I...can't."

Jack looked like he was about to say something else--something brave and caustic and self-sacrificing--and then deflated. "Why are you here, Daniel?" he asked.

"I saw you with Ba'al," he said, "and the...you know..."

"Torture by acid," Jack filled in, caustically flippant. "Sharp objects. Et cetera."

Daniel didn't flinch. He supposed he should be thankful for his lack of physical existence for that. "Well, I couldn't just not do anything."

"And yet," Jack said pointedly, "here you are. And here _I_ am."

_Calm,_ Oma had warned him._ Comforting_.

But Jack wouldn't respond to comfort, not now; he needed someone to be direct, to lay out what they had and what they needed and what had to be done to finish the mission. He needed to know what the mission _was_, because, as of this moment, he still thought it was escape, through force or stealth, and nothing that simple would ever work. "Ba'al is going to keep doing this to you," Daniel said evenly, "until you tell him what he wants to know."

After that, Jack would be killed. A deeply embedded part of Daniel rebelled at the idea of pushing Jack toward that under any circumstance, but when the alternative was eternal torture and the destruction of his soul...in any case, a little more knowledge might make some sort of escape plan more viable.

"Well, that's not gonna happen," Jack said, "because I don't _know_ what he wants me to know."

"Nothing?" Daniel said. There was a Tok'ra symbiote, he knew, and it had done something, but that was all. "There was a symbiote..." he prompted.

For a moment, Jack looked about to laugh hysterically. "Yeah," he said instead, mostly calm, though the mad (_angry_, Daniel thought, not..._mad_) glint in his eyes didn't completely disappear. "I let them put one of those things in me. I didn't even let them put one in _you_, and that was when it was Lantash."

"That was different," Daniel said. "I would've been Goa'ulded and crippled for life, which means Lantash would've been, too, because he couldn't be unimplanted, and then Jacob wouldn't have a symbiote. You were only supposed to have Kanan for...a few days, right? Or however long it took for Ayiana's plague to be cured and another host to be found."

Jack narrowed his eyes. "You _have_ been watching," he said, but it was accusing, because if Daniel had been watching and had known about this and hadn't done anything...

"I couldn't do anything," Daniel said. "There are too many consequences I can't predict." Jack rolled his eyes, so Daniel insisted, "The worst part about the way I am now is that I can see all of it happening, and I know how to help you, but I can't."

"Can," Jack countered. "_Won't_."

"Jack," Daniel said, then stopped and refocused. "Okay. So. You really don't know what the Tok'ra symbiote was trying to do? You couldn't tell just from being blended?"

"I don't know!" Jack said, but a second later, he thought about it again and said, "Uh...something to do with one of Ba'al's slaves. I got a visual, but I've never met her before."

"Which means Kanan must have known her," Daniel said, thinking through the possibilities. "'Her.' Female, then. Old, young? Human? _Lo'taur_? Do you have a name?"

"What the hell is a _lo'taur_?" Jack said blankly, because he _never_ remembered foreign words he didn't have to as long as he had people on his team to remember them instead.

"It's the slave...the... Remember me with Yu?"

"You with me what?" Jack said.

"The rank of slave I was dressed as when I died!" he said, impatient. Jack froze with his mouth open. Daniel winced. That certainly broke the _calm_ rule. "Sorry. I mean. It could tell us something about what she was doing, or what she might know or might have revealed. Is this person Ba'al's personal, favored slave, or one of many lower-ranked slaves?"

"I don't know," Jack said.

"What about..."

"Look, Daniel, just zip through there and do some recon for me," Jack said, as close to wheedling as he ever got. "That's all I need."

"I. Can't," he repeated, mostly because he already knew what was out there and it wouldn't help to have confirmation that it was hopeless.

"Why. Not?" Jack said again, stiffly.

Instead of answering, Daniel said, "Jack, no one knows you're here. The Tok'ra sent a guy to the SGC, and he doesn't know where you are, so Sam and Teal'c have no idea where they should even start looking. Now, General Hammond's--"

A sensation shivered through him and made him think of being pinched everywhere at once, but it was chased by a sense of dread and warning. There was a fine line between interfering and not, and Daniel was starting to step off it by giving Jack information that Jack had no place knowing. If he stepped wrong, Oma would stop him herself and Jack would be lost.

"Hammond's what?" Jack said.

"Well, you know the general," Daniel said, instead of what he had been about to say, which would have been leaked information about what was happening at the SGC. "You're in a fortress. The entire SGC couldn't take this place without massive casualties, and even then, they might not be enough, not against Goa'uld technology. You can't fight your way out this time."

"I _could_ if you'd _help me_!" Jack yelled, waving an arm in the air, desperately uncontrolled the way he never got even in his angriest times. "You know what Ba'al is doing to me! Take him out! For cryin' out loud, make him _stop_!"

"The Others would stop me first," Daniel said. "And...and I don't have the right to manipulate people any more than someone like Ba'al does."

"Then go away and let me be tortured in peace!" Jack spat.

"I won't let Ba'al keep doing this until there's nothing left of you," Daniel said. But if Jack really didn't know, then that was what would happen. Unless...

"Yes, you would," Jack was saying. "You are!"

Unless he Ascended.

Daniel could Ascend him.

"I can't get you out of here," Daniel said, "just like Oma couldn't heal me when I was wounded. But...I can help you Ascend."

Jack sat back against the wall of his cell.

There was a long moment in which Daniel thought that Jack might have just decided he was talking to a hallucination, after all, because no answer came for an awfully long time. "Jack?" he said. "Did you hear me?"

"You want to be my Oma," Jack said.

"Uh...well," Daniel said, his mind twisting as he tried to deal with the imagery that conjured up. "I suppose you could think of it that way. I mean, I wouldn't, because, uh..."

"Daniel," Jack said.

"Let me help you," Daniel said. "Jack. I can _help_ you."

Jack eyed the shoe lying on the floor in front of Daniel, as if he were considering picking it up and throwing it again, because it might prove once and for all that Daniel was merely a hallucination. He left it alone, though, and said, with the air of someone collecting all the intelligence he could before starting out on a risky campaign, "And then what happens?"

"And then...I don't know," Daniel said.

"If I'm catching the first plane of existence out of here," Jack pointed out, "I'm going to need a little more than that."

"Well, I'm not all-knowing," Daniel said. "I really _don't know_. All I can tell you is that it'll be...incredible. Your journey is your own to take as you will, and everyone's path is different. But first, you have to release your...burdens."

Daniel barely managed not to wince. He was actually starting to sound a bit like Oma.

"You sound like Oma," Jack said.

"No," he said defensively. "No, Oma would've said, uh...something like, uh...if you know the candlelight is fire, then the meal was cooked long ago."

"Why?" Jack said.

"To open your mind," Daniel said, wanting to explain that he couldn't just _tell_ Jack what the end result was. The point was the journey, and knowing the end before exploring it wasn't the same. Jack had to be willing to take the journey, not use it as a means to an end, or this wouldn't work. The burden they all bore was life and their instinctive need to hold onto it and all the troubles that came with it. It was hard to decide willingly to let go of it, but it was necessary.

"Though a candle burns in my house," Jack said, mocking, "no one's home."

"Okay," Daniel said determinedly, "let's...take this one step at a time."

"One at a time," Jack repeated. His eyes had dulled, perhaps from despair or from that odd, temporary focus that came with the sarcophagus and then faded away again.

"Jack," Daniel said sharply. Jack looked at him again. "This can all be over. You can't get out the way you want--"

"A distraction," Jack said. "Give me a distraction."

A sound made Daniel look up to see the sealed doorway above them start to open. "They're coming," he said.

"They'll see you," Jack said, his voice lowering in volume but becoming more panicked. "We can use that!"

They needed another plan, that was all. He should have remembered that plan A almost never worked; he needed a plan B or C, just in case this went wrong. It was something about a slave woman the Tok'ra symbiote had known. Even that was more than the SGC knew. They had to look for something else--something about a female slave. "I'll be back," he promised.

"A distraction, Daniel," Jack said, almost begging, turning to look up at the opening doorway that meant he would be tortured to death yet again. "That's all I'm asking for!"

Daniel determinedly slipped back out of the cell before anyone else could see him. The last thing he heard before he left the plane entirely was Jack's voice, calling, "Daniel?"

...x...

Oma was waiting for him. "You're treading a very fine--" she started.

Daniel hurried away from her, too.

...x...

"--motive has to be personal," Jonas was saying. SG-1 had migrated to his office soon after he'd volunteered to join the search, since there were more references, translation materials, and empty space there. Daniel settled himself in the corner of his office, watching Jonas read over something on his computer, Teal'c looking over his shoulder, while Sam stared hard at another computer on the other desk.

"For what reason?" Teal'c said.

Nyan looked up. "He's right. If all of Kanan's missions were really a success--"

"Exactly," Jonas said, nodding. "He went back to that planet for something, and if it wasn't because of a mission..."

Daniel stopped listening as they continued to talk. He looked around the office, taking note of what everyone was doing and what they hadn't begun to look at yet.

By the time Jonas finished talking, he had spotted something.

"Looking at schematics won't solve your problem," Daniel said in Sam's ear.

"Hm," she said.

The others stopped what they were doing. "Major Carter?" Teal'c asked.

"What?" Sam said.

"Did you say something?" Nyan answered.

"Uh...nothing." She shook her head. "Just thinking." A moment later, she said, "You're right. It was something personal to the symbiote, not a...a mission failure on the part of the Tok'ra."

"Not sure what good that does us, though," Jonas said.

"I don't think looking over this stuff again is going to solve our problem," she declared. "It won't be in the schematics and mission reports. What else did the Tok'ra send us?"

"Uh...Kanan's history...his notebook..." Nyan said, sifting through the materials.

"His _personal_ notebook?" Jonas said. "Not a...a mission log?"

Pushing away from Robert's desk, she said, "Hand me that one. Maybe I'll find something in there--something that would tell us _why_ he'd walk out with Colonel O'Neill."

Teal'c nodded. "If we knew Kanan's reasoning," he agreed, handing the notebook to her, "we might be able to find where he ultimately went."

Daniel slipped back out.

...x...

This time, Oma stopped him when he tried to rejoin Jack in his cell. "Daniel..." she warned.

"What? What did I do?" he said. "You think _they_ needed help from me to brainstorm?"

"You're speaking to them," she said.

"Sometimes I talk to myself when I'm on the plane, you've seen me do it," Daniel said stubbornly, knowing she knew exactly what his intentions had been. "If I'd shown myself to them, someone would've mentioned it, don't you think?"

Not Sam, though. If she'd heard his voice, her reflexive response would be to explain it as a normal thought that something else must have triggered. Even if he'd shown himself to her briefly by accident, she wouldn't have believed she'd actually seen him, so nothing in her reaction would confirm it to the Others. Her skepticism was his shield.

"I know what you're doing," Oma said.

"I'm encouraging certain thoughts that they would have had on their own anyway, and you know perfectly well they would," he retorted. "Maybe no one even heard me. Anyone who knows anything about them knows they come up with this kind of thing on their own all the time."

"What matters in this case is what the Others will think," she said.

"Why would the Others think SG-1 needed help?" he said. "Sam decided to pick up a notebook. I didn't make her. I didn't even push it toward her or anything. Now, if you'll excuse me..."

"Ascension is not something to take lightly," she said.

"I don't care," he snapped. "It's better than the alternative. Let me offer it to him--like you offered it to me, Oma, just like you've been teaching me." A thought occurred to him. "Wait. The way you showed up and told me about Jack... You...you _want_ me to do this, don't you?"

"What you do now is your decision," Oma said.

"But this is what you do. You help people Ascend. You've been teaching me the difference between interfering in life and interfering at the moment of death--this is why I'm here, isn't it?"

"You are here because you sought enlightenment and because I thought you deserved to seek it," she corrected. "I walk my path, and _if_ you so choose of your own free will, you may take the same course."

"Then I'd be helping in your cause by helping Jack," Daniel said. "Nothing more."

"Nothing more," she repeated. "It has to be his choice. Anyone can make the journey, but it has to be _his choice_."

"I know," he said.

Oma studied at him closely. "All right," she finally said. "Daniel--"

He stopped, impatient. "What?"

"If you begin on this path, the Others will see you as one of mine, committing the same crimes that I commit," she said. "I brought you here, but how far you follow me is your choice alone. I will never condemn you if you choose something else, but once you take this first step, you cannot turn back from it in the Others' eyes."

Daniel paused, but there was no question. If there was anyone for whom he was willing to spend his eternity under a veil of suspicion, it was Jack. "Fine," he said.

"I'll be watching," she said. He couldn't decide whether it was meant to be an encouragement or a warning, but he decided he didn't really care.

* * *

Continued in Part III: Enlightenment


	6. Part III: Enlightenment, 1 of 5

**XXXXX**  
**Part III: Enlightenment**  
**XXXXX**

When he arrived, Jack was lying crumpled on the ground, staring blearily up at the closing door. "I don't...remember," he said.

Daniel's mind froze momentarily with fear. He was too late--maybe it was the sarcophagus, or maybe it was the hours of being crushed by Ba'al, but what if he was too late and Jack was already too far gone?

"You?" Jack said, still looking at no one.

Pulling his courage back, Daniel walked closer to him and said, "Jack, who are you talking to?"

Though he must have been in Jack's line of sight, Jack's eyes remained fixed on something just past him. "The woman," Jack said.

Daniel glanced upward. "There's nobody there," he said calmly.

Finally, Jack let his gaze roll over to Daniel's face. "Look who's talking," he said.

He didn't make a move to get up, though, or even to move at all. His eyes, while looking at Daniel, weren't quite focused, and the ragged, burned holes in his shirt would have been enough to show what Ba'al had been doing to him even without that expression on his face.

"Does it still hurt?" Daniel said.

Jack made half a headshake. "Nope."

Wishing he were allowed to reach down and help his friend off the floor, at the very least, Daniel cleared his throat and said, "I told you I'd be back."

Finally, Jack slowly pushed himself up, staggering to his feet until he was staring Daniel in the eye. "If you were really here--"

"I am," Daniel said.

"Then do something!" Jack said.

Daniel felt tiny again--he was a friend failing a friend who had been teammate, commander, and more than either of them could explain. His friend was dying--_worse_ than dying--and he couldn't do anything.

Suddenly, Jack was angry, the transformation so quick that Daniel couldn't be sure if it was just Jack's frayed temper or if it was from whatever the sarcophagus had done to the chemicals in his brain. "You listen to me," Jack spat. "I don't wanna go through that again. If my friend were here and had the power to stop it, he'd _stop it!_"

"We can't defeat the enemy by becoming like them," Daniel said.

He'd said it so many times before in life, and this time when he finally had to power to act like a god, he felt like he was trying to convince himself as much as Jack that holding back was worth it. Even if he believed it in theory, it was hard to hold onto it while looking at Jack.

Jack had already turned away, leaning against the wall. "I don't have the right, Jack," Daniel insisted. "If I did this--if I did whatever I wanted, even to help someone I care about--where would I stop? I'd be worse than the ones we fought."

"Oh, come on," Jack scoffed, turning back around. "You're _Daniel_."

Ironically, despite how much it stung to be reminded of the way Jack's faith in him never wavered, even when it should, it strengthened Daniel's resolve, too. In Shifu's dream, he had had too much power and had hurt so many with it, not least of all Jack, who had believed in him too much. He hated the Others' rules sometimes, but there was a reason for them. He might bend rules to their limit, but if he broke them at will, he was no better than the Goa'uld.

"Ba'al is not going to stop," Daniel said. "He's just going to do this again."

"Yeah," Jack said, slumping slightly where he stood.

"So we don't have much time for you."

"You know what," Jack said, "screw it. It doesn't matter. Carter and Teal'c'll think of something."

Daniel shook his head. "It doesn't matter if they figure it out. Even if--"

"And you know," Jack continued, a gleam in his eye that said he was trying to provoke a response, but Daniel didn't mind, because it meant there was still fight--and life--left in him. "We got a replacement--"

"Nyan, yeah."

"--and there's this other new guy who wants in--"

"Jonas Quinn," Daniel said, nodding. "I know, and they're all looking, but--"

"He's at _least_ as smart as you," Jack said.

"I _know_, Jack," Daniel said. "And _you_ know they won't be able to get in here. There isn't always a way to get out alive."

"You're one to talk," Jack said. "How many times have we almost died and then gotten out anyway?"

"And now look at me," Daniel replied, spreading his arms. "Jack, sometimes, there _isn't a way_."

Jack walked up to him and stabbed a finger at him, only to pull back when it went through Daniel's chest. "You always gave me another option," he said. "And it pissed me off, but you think of stuff no one else would. You must have something. Give me _anything_."

"I am giving it to you now," he said. "All I can offer you is a choice _other_ thaneternal torment until there's nothing left of you to torture."

"Well, that's a dead-end, then," Jack said.

"No, it's not," Daniel said. "Jack."

"Daniel," Jack answered, but listlessly, as if he was saying it because it was a response and not because he had anything to say or wanted to hear anything more.

"You could do this," Daniel said. "If you'd just open your mind--"

"For cryin' out loud!" Jack burst out. "Will you give it a rest!" He sat down and glared up at Daniel.

"You...don't think you can Ascend," Daniel said, realizing.

"Oh, please," Jack muttered. "Me? Have you _met_ me?"

"Come on!" Daniel said, growing impatient now, because Ba'al's Jaffa were going to come back any moment and take Jack away again. "You're the man who...who established humanity's link to our most powerful allies, remember? You think someone like Thor would like you so much if you didn't have potential? You're--"

"What?" Jack interrupted harshly. "I'm what? Captain O'Neill, the hero of Abydos? If you haven't figured out that I'm not the guy you worshipped growing up, then you need to wake up and smell the gunpowder!"

Daniel shook his head, not rising to the bait in the words. Jack looked for a fight when all else failed him, and they couldn't afford to waste time with that now. "That legend wasn't real. You are. I know you're angry--otherwise, you would never claim that _I_ don't know the real you."

"If you know me," Jack said in a low voice, "then you know this is pointless."

"If I managed it--"

"You were always different. I'm not like you, Daniel."

"I'm well aware of our differences, Jack," Daniel said. "But everything I was...am...you're part of that."

But Jack laughed shortly at that and trailed a finger through Daniel's immaterial arm. "And look what we did to you."

Daniel blew out a breath. "I made those choices. You helped make a man with his own mind out of a scared and reckless child. You gave me in a few years more than I ever imagined I could experience in a lifetime, and yes, I've smelt gunpowder on you, just like you've seen the blood on my hands. You've done so much good, Jack, for all of us, and you're a good person. That's what matters. If our positions were reversed, you'd be here for me, too, like you were--"

Suddenly, Jack leaned in close to him and said, "Damn straight I would've been here for you! I'd've busted you out, blown this rat hole to hell, and made sure that sonuvabitch suffered!"

"The Others would've stopped you," Daniel said, fighting the temptation to do just that.

"They'd have a hell of a fight on their hands," Jack snapped, frustrated.

Just as frustrated, Daniel said, "No, they wouldn't! You don't understand, Jack--if I tried anything, they--"

The shiver of warning came again, something he might have called pain if he still had had those sensations. _If we're going to be useless_, Daniel wanted to yell at Oma and all the Others, _humans should at least get a warning_. Instead, he stopped and abandoned that tack.

He didn't know whether Jack had noticed his distress at all, which, in itself, could have told him how badly off Jack was. "And then Ba'al would be dead..." Jack was going on, one hand gesticulating sharply in the air.

"You wouldn't do that," Daniel said, imagining Jack using whatever power he had to destroy entire fortresses, planets, star systems, galaxies...

"...and don't think I'd stop there..."

"You're a better man than that--"

Jack yelled, "That's where you're wrong!"

Daniel stared at him, at his closest friend who had been father when he'd needed it and then teacher, brother, and leader.

And he knew it was true--if Daniel was bothered by the rules, Jack would have laid waste to them already or suffered the punishment for trying. Daniel's nature was to explore and to understand, but Jack's was to lead and to protect. If their positions had been reversed, Jack would have done _anything_ to get Daniel out of here, even if it wouldn't have worked.

But despite how much Daniel fumed at Oma, in the end he knew he _didn't have the right_. He wasn't of their world, and interfering in worldly matters wasn't fair. Saving Jack's life would also have meant killing Ba'al and changing the balance of power again among the System Lords, killing thousands of Jaffa, and influencing human choices and actions.

No one person should have that kind of power. As much as he was tempted, he couldn't act as a god, not even for Jack. Daniel couldn't help if the SGC couldn't do it on their own.

At least...the SGC couldn't do it _with Tau'ri technology_. But what if they looked elsewhere? All of the SGC's allies in the galaxy probably couldn't or wouldn't help. That was their allies, though. What if they tried someone else?

Daniel carefully tucked away the half-finished thought, holding it in reserve. Help came in many forms, and if it couldn't come from him, he'd simply need to find another way.

Plan C. Just in case.

"Look," Daniel said more quietly, because he might refuse to do what Jack wanted, but it didn't mean he would stop fighting for his friends in whatever way was still left to him, "when...my time came, I didn't want to stop living, either. I understand that it..."

"...that it goes against everything I taught you," Jack said over him. "Everything _we_ were."

Daniel determinedly kept his gaze steady, knowing the venom in Jack's voice was at least partially riding on the sarcophagus's effects and the situation. The past tense hurt, though, because he didn't know if it was because Daniel had left or because Jack felt that he was now betraying what SG-1 had stood for.

"But it was the choice I made," he went on steadily. "And now, you have that choice, too. It's not your life in danger, Jack--it's your _soul_. It's the only way."

Jack stilled suddenly. "No," he said, almost calmly. "It's not the only way."

"What are you talking about?" Daniel said.

Jack looked at him and didn't look away, and Daniel _knew_, and how _dare_ he think that was an option when he thought Daniel was the one refusing to fight? It was giving up, and Daniel _wasn't going to allow it_.

"No," Daniel said. "_No_, Jack."

"Any minute, they're gonna come," Jack said. "Ba'al is gonna kill me again. You can make it the last time."

"Don't ask me to do that," Daniel said, half-demand and half-plea.

His eyes intent, focused and frighteningly clear for the first time since he'd woken up this cycle, Jack said, "You can put an end to it."

Daniel honestly didn't know if he could. He could whisper a not-quite-audible distraction into someone's ear and see if a Jaffa slipped--mangled Jack's body too much, perhaps, or somehow damaged the sarcophagus too much to be repaired and used by the time Jack's body began to break down. The Others might stop him--Ascension was, technically, something that could be done by anyone, but using his influence to stop Jack's torment was certainly a breach of the laws.

And even if he could... "I won't do it," Daniel said. So long as there was another, better option, he would have no part in letting Jack O'Neill die.

"I'd do it for you, and you know it," Jack said.

It was true, and it didn't change anything. "I'm not you," Daniel said.

"Daniel..."

"There is a better way," Daniel said, as sternly as he could. "There is a way to save your soul and to start a new journey--you wanted a better way? I'm offering it to you."

The doorway above them began to grind open. Daniel closed his eyes, knowing what it meant and what was next.

Jack knew, too. "I don't want to see this cell again, Daniel," he said, warning, hoping, and then he walked the few steps to lie down at the side, where he wouldn't have as far to fall when the Jaffa dumped him back out of the prison.

Daniel determinedly gathered himself and slipped back out.

...x...

By the time he slipped back into the SGC, SG-1 and Jonas had already figured out why Kanan had taken over Jack's body and knew exactly where he was being held.

And by then, General Hammond had looked at the schematics, too, and said 'no.' Nyan and Jonas were huddled together with Sam over a bench top, still looking desperately for another solution.

But Teal'c was alone and in _kelno'reem_.

Daniel sat down opposite him in Teal'c's familiar little room. Even knowing it wouldn't happen, he almost expected the Jaffa to open his eyes and give him a brief nod of welcome.

For a moment, Daniel did close his eyes and try to pull a meditative calm around himself without doing anything at all. He had promised not to be rash, and it was important not to make any mistakes this time. The stakes were high, and there was no Jack or Sam or Teal'c to pull him back anymore if he wandered too close to the edge. He'd told Jack, after all, that he wasn't a reckless child anymore, and it was time to prove it.

Finally, when he had the full plan in his mind, he opened his eyes. "I wish I were here to help you," Daniel said aloud. Teal'c didn't hear, but that was okay; he wasn't supposed to. Not quite. "I wish I could do something, but I can't step in for the Tau'ri--even for Jack--when it can't be accomplished by Tau'ri means and _Tau'ri_ technology. I hope you understand."

Teal'c didn't open his eyes, but his frown deepened very slightly.

_Daniel_... Oma was warning, gentle as the breeze that came before a storm. _Careful careful careful..._

"I wish I'd been here these past months, Teal'c," Daniel said honestly. "Like when you met Kytano--Imhotep--and were almost killed by Lord Yu. I never thought I'd be thankful to a Goa'uld, but I'm grateful to Lord Yu for that. You picked the right Goa'uld to trust, if there is such a thing. I guess you and he...well, you're not allies, but enemies of the same enemy, maybe."

_Pull back pull back,_ Oma urged. _Too much_.

"And, uh...thank you. For how hard you've been trying. For Jack." He couldn't help blurting, "And I really wish you'd tell me to be silent and meditate."

Maybe this was why Oma and Shifu kept telling him not to linger around here too much. It made it harder to remember he didn't belong here anymore.

He left.

Daniel watched the other three continue to pore over reports until they were called into the briefing room. He followed and heard the general say, "Teal'c thinks a Goa'uld mothership could take out Ba'al's outpost."

Sam looked surprised for a moment, then said, "Probably. The problem is getting one."

"Lord Yu has been willing to help us in the past," Teal'c pointed out, "particularly when he believes it will be to his advantage against the System Lords."

"We just need to send him the information," Sam said, lighting up. "Sir--"

"Do it," the general said.

...x...

Daniel started to seek out Yu in his territory of the galaxy, only to find Oma pulling him back. "I'll just watch," Daniel said.

"I will spare you the lure of manipulating a mortal's intentions for the gain of yourself and your friends," she answered. "You've already done more than you should. If Lord Yu chooses not to accept the information about Ba'al, I will not allow you to change his mind."

"He'll do it," Daniel said confidently. "Yu is smart. He was practical enough to help the SGC and even the rebel Jaffa, _even_ after I betrayed him, because he knows he'll need help if he wants to defeat Anubis and the System Lords." Even though Daniel's last foray into Yu's homeworld had made it clear that his age worried his Jaffa, well, he was still doing the right thing for now. That was what counted.

"In that case, there is nothing for you to do in Yu's homeworld," she pointed out. She gave him a long look. "You are coming very close to crossing the line."

_[When are you going to end this?]_ Jack's voice mumbled in his ear.

Daniel looked around but saw nothing, still standing with Oma on the wrong plane. Then, again, fainter...

_[...Daniel?]_

"Let me sit with Jack," Daniel said. "Please."

Oma nodded. "If you do anything to aid an attack on Ba'al, even if it's disguised by Yu's efforts, I will know."

...x...

Daniel watched Ba'al torture Jack because he couldn't not be there when Jack was calling him.

"Daniel," Jack whispered, staring straight at him.

Ba'al smirked. "Your mind is beginning to fail," he told Jack.

_Wait_, Daniel thought when a splash of acid on Jack's skin made him flinch weakly. _Wait, Jack. Not much longer._

Jack died again soon after. For all the times Daniel had been terrified that one of his friends would die, he found that he had never quite understood until now what it must have been like for them to watch him die. Even knowing that it wasn't' permanent--that there was a sarcophagus waiting for him--the sight of Jack's eyes, open and glazed over in death, was nearly enough to crumble what little self-control Daniel had managed to gather. He had spent years training and fighting in the hope that he would never have to see that, and now, he couldn't look away.

The first thing Jack said, after being revived and thrown back into the prison, was, "Daniel?"

Finally, the doorway closed above them, sealing them alone together in the cell. "I'm here," Daniel said, crouching next to Jack's seat.

"You were gone," Jack mumbled, not turning to look at him.

"I know," Daniel soothed, moving in front of him and trying to catch his eyes. He reached out a hand but stopped before he reached Jack's shoulder. "I know. There was something I had to do, but I'm...I'm back now, and I'll stay with you until it's over."

Jack wouldn't look at him, even when he was right there in front of his eyes. "It'll never be over," he said quietly.

"Yes, it will," Daniel said firmly. "You're the one who taught me not to give up. Don't, not now."

"Daniel," Jack said. "There's... You have to end this."

"Hold on a little longer, Jack. Just a little longer."

Jack shook his head. "No. I can't go back there--"

"You won't have to," Daniel said. "It's almost over."

Finally, Jack met his eyes, and he thought he could see a glimpse of hope. "How?" Jack said.

Daniel smiled. "You were right," he said. "There's always another way. It's not time for you to start a new journey, Jack, not yet."

Sitting up straight, Jack said, more sharply than he'd been, "What d'you do?"

"It's not like that," Daniel kind-of-lied. "It was...it was your team, Jack. And Jonas, too. Your team thought of something."

"What?" Jack said, rising to his feet. He still looked a bit manic, but Daniel didn't mind this time. It was going to take all of Jack's adrenaline and more if he wanted to escape this time, and if the sarcophagus's high could push him just a bit further than he would normally be able to handle, maybe it would be for the better, just until he could get himself to an infirmary.

Something exploded nearby. The lights in the building flickered and then died.

Daniel stood and looked up at the opening to the cell. "All you wanted was a fighting chance, and this is it. If anyone can make it out, it's you." Jack stared at him. "Now!"

"Lord Yu attacks!" someone cried outside. Jack's head whipped around as the cell began to tip, bringing him closer and closer to the exit, and Daniel used the momentary distraction to vanish from sight.

"Daniel?" Jack said, looking around.

The cell settled into position. The door ground open. Jack stared at his chance for freedom, looked around once more--_I'm not here, anymore, Jack, just go_, Daniel thought--and then stepped outside.

Once out, instinct and years of training took over--Jack threw himself bodily at an approaching Jaffa and beat him savagely into unconsciousness. He stared for a moment, then took the Jaffa's _zat'nik'tel_ and ran down the corridor.

_Go_, Daniel thought, watching over him as he ran.

...x...

Daniel watched while Jack hid in a ditch for two, three, four hours, clutching the hand of the _lo'taur_ girl whom Kanan had used his body to save, until the last of Ba'al's Jaffa had fled through the Stargate. By the time Jack dialed the Alpha Site, he was shivering, sweating more than his abused body could afford, dragging the terrified _lo'taur_ along even faster.

Jack finally woke up in the infirmary, surrounded by his team--_all_ of them, even if no one could see Daniel--and Janet and the general.

_Enough,_ Oma said when he didn't leave immediately.

Still, Daniel lingered a bit longer, waiting for the others to leave, and when they did, he finally moved to stand in front of Jack's bed and allowed himself to be seen. "I have to go," Daniel said, watching as Jack's eyes moved sluggishly toward him. He offered a small smile. "I always seem to be saying good-bye to you."

"Yeah," Jack rasped, turning his head to look at him more fully. Hopefully, wistfully, "Why don't you stick around for a while?"

"I can't," Daniel said.

"You just did," Jack said.

"Special case," he pointed out.

"How about...pick a solstice," Jack said. "Any solstice." Daniel shook his head as Oma urged _Daniel Daniel Daniel_. Jack frowned. "Groundhog Day?" he tried.

"No," Daniel said, both amused and scared by how tempting that idea was--spending the day with Jack and everyone else just for one day, as long as that one day would repeat itself over and over again.

"You going again now?" Jack said quietly.

"I'm always watching you guys," Daniel said.

"That's just weird," Jack said. "You'd better not be peeping at Sam."

Daniel laughed and realized he hadn't laughed since he'd Ascended. "Just. Please stop getting yourself thrown into prisons," he said.

_Daniel..._ Oma said.

"I don't have a lot of time," he said quickly. "Look, you probably don't feel too well right now, and... I can't imagine anyone else going through...all that and surviving, and... It's just. I just want to say that you're going to be okay."

Something dark, pained, flickered through Jack's eyes. "How do you know?" he asked.

"Do you trust me, Jack?" Daniel said.

"Yeah," Jack said.

"Then trust me," Daniel said. The withdrawal would be difficult, but it would pass with the right care. The greatest challenge to Jack would be mental--holding onto his strength long enough to recover. If faith in a friend or an Ascended being helped in that, then it was the least Daniel could do.

_Someone's coming_, Oma warned. _Time's up._

"I can do that," Jack finally said. "You gonna be okay?"

Daniel forced out one last smile and nodded. "Yeah. I'm going to be fine, too," he promised, and quietly slipped out of sight again.

XXXXX

"Daniel," Oma said when he returned to her on Kheb, days later. He was still watching with one eye as Jack shivered in a room, all weapon-like objects out of reach, armed guards at the doorway and Teal'c holding a zat gun as Janet approached cautiously with a syringe.

_[Daniel?]_ Jack gasped, his eyes red and his body pulling against the restraints holding him to the bed. _[You bastard, where the hell did you go? You said you'd help me!]_

In the observation deck, Nyan scrunched himself into his chair and hugged his legs. Sam looked like she wanted to do the same, and she didn't protest when Jonas entered and set a friendly, bracing hand on her shoulder, the way Nyan was too tentative to do.

"He'll get better," Oma reminded him. "This will be over soon."

"I hate this," Daniel said.

She nodded. "I know," she said. "I can't make you leave, but I urge you to. Your watching isn't helping them, and it's hurting you." He shook his head, unable to leave. Oma sighed. "You're like an addict, Daniel. Every time I think you've pulled yourself away, you turn around and go back. Sooner or later, you need to free yourself of that."

"You're the one who encouraged me to help Jack," Daniel said.

"You're the one who made it more than that," she said. "I don't want to see you hurt. It will only become more difficult if you keep resisting."

"Life is always difficult," he said. "Being willing to fight for the hard things--that's what makes them matter."

"This isn't life," she reminded him. He didn't answer as he continued watching and wondered what it was that made things matter in this existence.

...x...

Teal'c was the first one who sat with Jack (without a weapon) when it became feasible. Jack was still alternately sweating and shivering, but his mind was clear enough that some companionship seemed healthy. Daniel stayed with them--without allowing himself to be seen--until Jack fell asleep. While Sam waited for her turn to sit her shift with their commander, she sat by Martouf, instead, one door down the hall.

Jacob came by around the same time. Officially, he was there to smooth any ruffled feathers that might remain, given that Kanan had been one of theirs. Unofficially, he checked on Jack, then squeezed Sam's shoulder and said, "How's it going, kid?"

"Beginnings of heart failure, and there are some indications of renal disease," she said, nodding at Martouf. "He's working on an infection, too. Mild, but his system doesn't seem to want to kick it. He doesn't really wake up much anymore. Before long, we're going to have to put him on more complete life support and wait it out, or...make a decision."

"I was asking about you and your team," Jacob said. "Not just Martouf."

She shrugged and caught his hand in her own. "I'm sure Lantash wants to know," she said, still not answering the question.

"Thank you," Lantash said quietly after a moment.

"When the time comes," she said evenly, "I think you should have a say in...you know, what happens to him, how we manage his...affairs."

A knock sounded, and Teal'c opened the door. "Major Carter," he said, nodding politely to Jacob. "O'Neill wishes to speak to you."

Sam nodded and stood up. "You take your time here," she said to Lantash, gesturing at the chair she had just vacated.

"Tell Jack I said 'hi,'" Jacob said.

The transition between host and symbiote was smoother than before--they had been practicing. Or, Daniel supposed, they had finally and truly _blended_, each influencing and compensating for the other until they settled at an equilibrium.

And as Daniel watched Lantash hold a vigil over someone so close to him that Daniel couldn't even begin to comprehend, he made a decision.

He concentrated, making sure he knew what he was doing, then pushed his consciousness gently into Martouf's mind.

XXXXX

The first thing Daniel did was to fall into an ocean.

The second was to wonder why he was falling at all, if he was more energy than matter, and why there was water in Martouf's mind and how it was possible that he was actually getting _wet_. Just as he was starting to worry, a strong hand closed around his arm and hauled him out of the water and dragged him onto dry land.

"_Yi shay_," he coughed. This was ridiculous. When Oma snuck into his brain, she ended up sitting in the Lotus position on a ramp. When Daniel tried it, he flopped into a large body of water.

"Daniel?" a very familiar voice asked.

He picked himself up off the ground and looked around, focusing for a moment to reconstruct himself as being upright and dry. It was dark, but it wasn't hard for him to recognize Martouf staring at him, looking just as he had looked a year ago. "Hi," Daniel said, waving awkwardly. "How's it going?"

Martouf frowned. He wasn't wearing Tok'ra leathers or his SGC BDUs, but rather a set of clothing that Daniel wouldn't have thought out of place on a human from an alien planet, or even from parts of Earth. "How...what are you doing here?"

"Okay," Daniel said. "Uh..." Huh. He hadn't thought this out at all. "So. How much do you know about what's going on...with you in the physical world? I mean, are you aware--"

"--of my physical state?" Martouf finished. "I have some idea. How did you bring me here? The last time I saw you..." He tilted his head, looking confused.

"I didn't bring you, per se," Daniel said. "We're in a very deeply buried part of your mind, Martouf. It's the part of you that's...well, _you_, without all the physical limitations. I, uh, don't know that the Tok'ra believe in a soul, or a consciousness not directly attached to neurons, but--"

"But my people did," Martouf said. "I understand."

"Oh, I...I see," Daniel said. All he knew of Martouf's people was that they were from a planet called Marloon that had been emptied by Goa'uld forces.

"Are you a spirit?"

Daniel shook his head. "Not exactly. Do you remember when Shifu came to the SGC and Aldwin tried to extract his memories?"

"I saw him being converted to energy," Martouf said, a look of understanding dawning. "Samantha spoke of the Ascended being named Orlin. Is that what you have become?"

"Yup." Daniel allowed himself to shift back into the spectrum that Martouf would see as glowing light, then dropped back into place.

Martouf smiled. "I am glad. It is good to see you--I thought you were certain to die."

Daniel sat down on a rock, feeling a breeze whisper through his hair and over his face. How odd that he felt more physical, more _real_ inside another man's deepest dreams and thoughts than he had since he had been alive. "It's really good to see you, too," he said, managing another smile back when Martouf took a seat near him. "I'm...actually here to talk to you about that."

"Oh?"

"Martouf," Daniel said, as gently as he could, "your body is dying." Martouf looked like he was more resigned than surprised. "As we speak, Lantash is trying to decide if he would allow you to go on as a shell of the man you were, or if he would be able to live with himself if he asked Dr. Fraiser to stop treatment."

He teased apart the boundaries holding this world apart from the physical, then pointed. Martouf followed his finger to a vision of Jacob sitting at the bedside. "I would wish that burden on no one," Martouf said sadly. "Could you tell him something on my behalf?"

"I, uh...talking to people is sort of complicated," Daniel said, but added quickly, "but it's not just that. I think I have a way that would be a lot better than dying and better than living as you are now."

Martouf looked out for a while, then said, "It's all right, Daniel. I have lived a long time. I have fought harder and loved more deeply than most men could imagine. If it is my time, I am ready."

"You're much better at this than I was," Daniel said. "Listen, you're not thinking of the other option. You've seen a lot of the galaxy, and you've done incredible things, but trust me when I say that there is so much more you could still see. You could Ascend. I can help you."

"Really?" Martouf said. "I was under the impression that it took years of study."

"Not exactly," Daniel told him. "Not study, in the way you and I used to study in mortal life. I studied the philosophies based on Oma Desala for years and didn't understand. The understanding comes through experience alone...and," he added, "I can give you a hand."

A flicker of interest appeared in Martouf's eyes, then died down warily. "Does one not have to be pure of spirit to Ascend?"

After talking to Jack, Daniel really didn't want to have a conversation like this one again. "I know you," he finally said, and with that, he understood why Oma had brought up Martouf to him before: she wouldn't force him to take her path, but she wasn't above pointing him in the direction of potential souls that could be helped, either. Martouf might merit Ascension, but Oma didn't know him well enough to say that. "I know where your journey has taken you," he said. "But I don't know where it began. Tell me about yourself?" Technically, he could have simply dug deeper into Martouf's mind and found out for himself, but perception was half the story.

Martouf looked around himself. "I suppose everything began here. This is the planet Marloon as I remember it. This shore is where I first met Lantash. His host had been fatally injured in an attempt to free my people from a minor Goa'uld. "

"And you offered yourself?" Daniel said.

"Yes," Martouf said. "I was a quick-tempered, impulsive boy."

"_What_?" he blurted..

Martouf grinned, a little mischievously. "Do you think someone like Lantash would be drawn to a quiet, calm young man? I was grieving for my people's losses. We shared the same passion--the same righteous anger for what the Goa'uld had done."

Curious, Daniel set his elbows on his knees and leaned forward. "He really changed you, then."

"Yes," Martouf said, "and no. I grew up; my symbiote simply had a hand in shaping who I became. Lantash is still relatively young for a symbiote; I have been an old man for a long time. A hundred years can change a man more than they do a symbiote."

"And you've fought for the Tok'ra ever since."

"You have, at times, expressed dissatisfaction with the methods that that Tok'ra use," Martouf said carefully. "I cannot, however, claim that I regret having used them, even the ones that I thought horrible."

"I know," Daniel said. "And I know you did those things because you thought you had to. I know how difficult the war with the Goa'uld makes everything."

Looking thoughtful, Martouf asked, "Do you think it was wrong?"

"It doesn't matter what I think," Daniel said. "I don't know much about your missions, anyway, except the ones I was there for."

"You can guess."

Daniel nodded. He knew, from the transcript of the interview with the _zatarc_ detector, that Martouf had once destroyed almost everyone on a planet--Jaffa warriors and civilians both, not to mention human slaves--to help keep Cronus's army from increasing in size. That had been one of the man's last, but it probably hadn't been anywhere near the worst. "No," he said. "I don't think it was wrong. I think you did what you had to, and not because you liked it. I think you did a lot of good for our side, and that you're a good man. If anyone deserves Ascension, you've certainly earned this second chance after everything you've been through."

"Ascension," Martouf echoed. "To another plane."

A mask of calm wasn't the way to help Jack, but this man might respond to it. Daniel took a deep breath and smiled. "Your journey on the mortal plane is over--or it will be, one way or another, whether in weeks or hours. But you can start a new journey."

"What will happen?"

"Everyone's path is different, but I can promise you it will be amazing...and I, and my teacher, will be there if you need help finding your way. You'll understand things in a way you never could have in life."

Martouf considered for a moment, then said, "But what exactly does that mean?"

Daniel had had the benefit of a previous lesson at Kheb and a few years of study that gave him some theoretical knowledge, if not true understanding. Martouf probably knew of Oma Desala, Orlin, Kheb, and Shifu, but it would have been a very peripheral knowledge, mostly from conversations with people like Sam. Daniel suspected Martouf was closer to the right state of mind than he himself had been, but while Daniel had often lacked the wisdom for his knowledge, Martouf needed at least a little knowledge for any of his wisdom to be useful.

So now, he pictured himself in Teal'c's room, reaching into a box and pulling out a candle. He closed his eyes, pulling that construct into being, and when he opened his eyes again, he was calmly setting the candle down on the sandy beach while Martouf stared.

"How did you..." Martouf said, then shook his head. Daniel could almost see him trying to reconcile what he saw with the logic that he, as a Tok'ra, had relied on. "We are inside my mind," he started, frowning, "so the laws of nature might be bent--"

"I assure you," Daniel interrupted, "I am breaking no laws of nature--all I hope to break is the barrier you perceive between what is true and what you know."

"On second thought, you are _inside my mind_, after all," Martouf added.

"Talk about things you never thought were possible, huh?"

"So why did you choose to drop into the ocean?"

Daniel made a face. "I'm still trying to get the hang of all this, okay?" he said, and was gratified to see Martouf smile.

"The water should be shallow there," Martouf said, frowning at the point where Daniel had entered his mind. "I want to ask how you were submerged, but it does not seem relevant."

"How deep is the water if you cannot see the bottom?" Daniel said.

Martouf considered for a moment but didn't answer.

"What is this?" Daniel said, gesturing at the candle.

Martouf picked it up, turning it over in his hands as Daniel could see him turning the question over in his mind. "An object," he said. He studied it a moment longer, and, to Daniel's surprise, he scooped up a handful of sand and reformed it into another candle. He put both of them back down on the ground, looking pleased. "It is only a dream," he said, almost to himself.

"But what if it weren't?" Daniel said. "Where did it come from, and why?"

"Nowhere," Martouf said, then shook his head. "From me. This is my mind."

"This is your soul," Daniel told him. Martouf nodded, as if that made perfect sense. "I was going to show you an exercise that involves lighting the candle, but you seem to have--"

One of the candles exploded.

"Right," Daniel said. "That. Yeesh. You know, it took me hours to try to figure out what I was doing when Oma Desala did this with me."

"You think too much," Martouf told him, and gave him the kind of wide, bright smile he usually reserved for huge victories or conversations with Sam. "Acceptance is not for the young."

Daniel sat back. "I said before that I could help you Ascend," he said. "And I will, but before you decide on this, I need to tell you that the practice isn't exactly encouraged."

"Will you suffer some consequence for helping me?" Martouf asked.

"No--well...put it this way. I'm not planning to obey that rule, anyway. Whether or not you accept my help only affects you. I'm only telling you this because I think you should know what you're committing to. There is a lot to see and to learn, and I think we--Ascended beings--can make a difference, but know that there will be limitations, too."

Martouf looked back out the window Daniel had made to the outside world. "I won't be able to interact with them, will I?" he said, watching as Sam walked into the room again to tell her father something, Jonas standing a little behind her.

"No," Daniel said. "Well..." He peeked outside of Martouf's mind and found Oma Desala watching them. She raised her eyebrows at him but didn't step in, so he turned back to Martouf. "Technically, no, not really. There may be exceptions...like I'm doing with you now."

"I suppose it wouldn't be fair," Martouf said, nodding, easily accepting something that Daniel knew and understood but still could barely abide. The Tok'ra, after all, were much more used to the idea of serving the bigger picture. He turned to Daniel and said, "May I have a last word with them, while they are at my side?"

Oma had given Daniel that chance to tell Jack and Skaara his last wishes. It was only fair. Daniel nodded toward them. "Go ahead," he said.

_[...if you might want to stick around until Colonel O'Neill's recovered,]_ Sam was saying to Jacob. _[It's up to you, but obviously, you're always welcome.]_

Martouf seemed to steel himself--perhaps he was deciding on what to say--then grasped Jacob and Sam by the arm. Daniel watched the Carters appear on the beach with them, and he sat back, quiet. This wasn't his time to speak, no matter how much he wanted to talk to his friend again.

"Martouf," Sam said, incredulous. She looked around. "How--that's not possible--" She turned back. "_Martouf_?"

"It is good to see you again, Samantha," Martouf said. Looking at Jacob, whose eyes glowed, he added, "And you, my friend. We always knew the time would come when we would have to part ways."

For once, Lantash didn't speak.

"What are you saying?" Sam said. "Are...are you...is it now?"

"I do not wish you to grieve my passing," Martouf said, and she swallowed hard. He gestured toward Daniel, who made an effort not to react when Sam's eyes widened upon seeing him. "It seems that we have a mutual friend who wants to show me another path."

"Daniel," she said, taking a step toward him. Daniel held very still and shifted the sand beneath her feet to make sure she didn't get any closer to him. "What's going on? Say something."

"How can this be?" Lantash finally spoke up. "Is this...this is Marloon, where we--"

_[Daniel,]_ Oma warned gently. _[Now. I will help you, but now is the time.]_

"Martouf," Daniel called, over the gentle sound of the waves.

There was a brief hint of regret in his expression, but Martouf smiled and told them, "You have been...very dear to me. Take care of each other. And Jacob, too," he added, smiling at Lantash, not specifying which he wished to take care of whom.

"We're going to miss you," Jacob said solemnly.

"Where are you going?" Sam said, her eyes bouncing between Martouf and Daniel.

"I believe I will find out soon," Martouf said good-naturedly.

She took a deep breath. "Daniel, take care of him?"

Because as much as Daniel had once been more a responsibility to her than an equal, he had become a friend and teammate, and, above all else, they trusted each other with everything. He nodded to her, then stood and laid a hand on Martouf's shoulder, teasing the man's consciousness from his flawed, mortal form.

"Goodbye," Martouf told them, and let himself be swept away.

...x...

Sam seemed a little frozen after seeing Martouf's body turn into light and disappear. Daniel listened with half an ear as Oma greeted Martouf, still watching the contained flurry in the SGC infirmary. Jonas, still hovering in the periphery, looked like his jaw was in danger of falling to the ground, and Janet hurried in just in time to see the last of the light disappear. She would see it later on the security tapes, anyway, and recognize it for what it was.

"Daniel," Oma's voice said, and he turned to see her standing alone. "He's gone exploring--I should join him for now. Will you behave yourself while I'm gone?"

"Yeah," he said, continuing to watch. "Sure."

"Are you all right?" she asked. He nodded. "I know that your limits frustrated you when you spoke with Jack O'Neill. It's natural to want to reaffirm that you can do some good--"

"I wanted to help Martouf Ascend because he deserved it, and it was in my power," Daniel interrupted. "Not just because I'm annoyed at the Others' rules."

"And you did well," Oma said. "He seems like a good man."

"He is."

"But the next time you feel powerless," she said, "take care that you do not turn to a man whose soul you understand less well than Martouf's. Most people might deserve to Ascend, but only one mistake will easily place too much power in the wrong hands."

Daniel watched Teal'c fold Sam into a hug just outside the isolation room. "I don't ever want to feel that helpless again," he said.

"But you will, I promise you that," Oma said. "You have to learn to accept what you can't do and continue doing what you can."

"I'll find you and Martouf later," Daniel answered as Jacob touched the empty scrubs left on the hospital bed one more time. "I won't do anything here."

XXXXX

When Jack got better, he bought Jonas a fish in a little tank, plunked it on top of Daniel's desk, and walked away.

Jonas stared at it and then asked Sam surreptitiously if he was supposed to eat it or something, because if it was okay he'd really prefer to let it live and watch it swim around. She made a face at him, and Teal'c brought in a container of fish food and accidentally killed the fish by feeding it too much. Jonas was horrified.

Sam brought him two new fish--so the one wouldn't be lonely, she said--and Jack never noticed the difference. Daniel wasn't sure Jonas fully realized what Jack's awkward gesture meant, especially since Jack started supervising his training around the same time, which meant harsh drills, making him run harder and shoot better each day. Jack O'Neill himself had marked Daniel's old desk and the office as Jonas's property, and even if there were rumors about token aliens in training to fill the SG-1 rookie spot, Jonas didn't seem to care.

One day, Jonas finished his assignments and spent a ridiculous amount of time with his arms folded on the desk and his chin cushioned on top, watching the fish chase each other around and around with a silly smile on his face.

"Hi," Nyan said, stopping in the doorway one evening. "I'm going to bed. Um. 'Night."

Jonas glanced up from his fish and smiled. "Goodnight."

Instead of moving, though, Nyan lingered and said, "How are you?"

Looking surprised, Jonas said, "Fine. Why?"

Nyan shrugged, shuffling one foot against the floor. "I dunno. Just...they joke about non-Tau'ri working here, but most of us didn't have a choice in it. And Kelowna was...uh...a big thing."

"Yeah," Jonas said. His smile became a little flatter.

"It must've been a strange time for you," Nyan said awkwardly. "Being here. After being there."

"Yeah," Jonas repeated. "Well."

Nyan slipped inside. "Teal'c and Daniel made sure I would be okay when I first came. No one else really understands what it's like. But Daniel's gone, and Teal'c's been a little distracted since then, and no one's probably helped you settle in. I don't even know if you've been to the surface."

"Oh, there was an autodestruct and evacuation drill once," Jonas said, brightening. "I went outside of the Mountain and everything. It was nighttime, and there were stars and lights..."

"Ye...eah," Nyan said. "Um. I'll ask someone to show you around. Maybe Sam would--I know you've been working with her a lot, and she's...you know, from Earth."

"We can do that?" Jonas said. "Okay. Thanks."

"I'm leaving in a couple of months," Nyan said. "And I'm pretty sure the team's looking forward to the switch by now."

"Oh, I'm sure it's not that they--"

Nyan waved a hand. "I just take pride in not getting them killed," he said. "Um...I know I've been pushing you toward SG-1, and at first it was mostly selfish, but after seeing you work...I really think it's a good idea. I'm not going on the next mission--it's an undercover operation--so I can make sure everything's settled here with you. Maybe we can talk to Colonel O'Neill and you can come with us on the next one after that to make the transition easier."

Jonas grinned at his tank of fish. "I'd love to," he said eagerly, shaking food pellets into the water. "I think Colonel O'Neill likes me well enough not to shoot me now, too. Do you think they'll let me learn to fly a ship?"

Maybe new enthusiasm was what the team needed, Daniel decided. It certainly wouldn't hurt.


	7. Part III: Enlightenment, 2 of 5

**Part III (cont'd)**

"Were you a mother?" Daniel asked once when he visited Oma's sanctuary on Kheb, where Martouf was meditating in the corner. She turned and raised an eyebrow at him. "When you were alive, I mean. Did you have children? It's just that you seem to be collecting us now."

She smiled, amused, then let it fade away. "It was a very, very long time ago," she told him.

"Ah," he said, "but to one who has achieved enlightenment...time is...something something something." This time, she laughed aloud. "Do you forget your life, after all that time?"

"No," Oma said. "Never. And, yes, I did have two sons and four daughters."

Daniel leaned back on his hands. "Wow. That's a _lot_." Then again, five children didn't seem extraordinary on Earth, if a bit more than the average. Earth had good medicine, though; they didn't worry about half of their children dying before they were old enough to work, nor about how easy it was for a mother to die during or just after the birth. Perhaps Oma Desala's people had been technologically advanced, too. "Did they Ascend with you?"

To his surprise, she shook her head. "The time during which my people learned to Ascend was a time of tumult and uncertainty. Some of us chose this path, meditating and seeking universal truth; others instead sought out new lands or mingled with the cultures they found. My children took the latter path while I took the former."

He watched her as she watered a drooping plant. "Do you wish they'd gone with you?"

"I wish they had been able to experience all of this," she answered. "I wish all people could have that chance, but you know my opinions on that already."

"Well, maybe you shouldn't feel bad for them or anything," he told her. "They might not have seen this plane, but they had adventures you never will, too. I mean, I did a lot of things while I was alive--and I'm not completely proud of all of it, but I wouldn't have given that up for years of meditation to seek enlightenment, either. Your children probably had very full lives. "

Oma finished with her plants and turned to him, her expression soft. "That's kind of you, Daniel." She looked around. "Although...most things that can be experienced in life are also open to us as we are now."

He shook his head. "It's different," he explained. "Even when I loiter on the lower planes, even aside from missing the interactive parts of things...it's not as sharp. Nothing is as...as intense as it was _before_. Do you know what I mean?"

She studied his expression for a while. Finally, she said, "I think I may have forgotten that about how we used to live."

"I won't," he said determinedly, holding firmly to the memory of the extreme highs and lows of life. "It's too important to forget."

Oma smiled at him again, but she didn't say--and Daniel tried not to think--that ten thousand years of perspective and distance changed things.

"I think you're doing good things, whether or not your blood children took the same path," he offered, but, to his disappointment, she looked more saddened by that than buoyed.

"That's very kind of you to say," she said again.

XXXXX

"Have you been studying Morgan all this time?" Ganos Lal said one day.

Daniel looked up from his book, about to answer, only to pause when he remembered Oma's words. "Uh...s...sort of," he said. "Well, no, not the whole time. But."

When he stopped and didn't go on, she sighed. "You are one of Oma Desala's, are you not?" she said. "Yes, she and I have never quite seen eye to eye."

Even though Oma herself had warned him about this, that he would be marked as one of hers--he wasn't clear yet whether that meant her family, her herd, her army, or something else--he answered, "I'm her student. That doesn't mean I belong to her."

"I don't mean to offend," Ganos Lal said. "But would you prefer that I leave?"

"Are you a spy?" Daniel said.

Ganos Lal seemed surprised for a moment. "Not this time," she said.

"You're not spying on me or Oma," he clarified.

"No," she said.

"But she was telling the truth," he said. "You've spied on people before, for the Others."

"Are there times when you doubt that Oma Desala tells you the truth?" Ganos Lal asked, looking concerned. "We may disagree on occasion, but she is not prone to telling lies."

"No," Daniel said quickly, defensively. "It's not that. It's just...well, perspectives can color a truth without making it a lie. That's all."

"Very wise," she said.

"I'm not asking you to leave or anything," he said. He'd found her interesting before, partly because she deigned to talk to him and partly because she wasn't actively condemning what he tried to do. "Uh...no offense, but if you're not here to watch me and make sure I don't break rules...then why _are_ you here?"

She nodded back down at the book he was reading. "You said before that you found Morgan le Fay an interesting character. You might say I thought the same during her time on Earth, and I came when I learned that you were searching for information about her," she explained. "Last time, you never had a chance to say just what it was you found so fascinating about the topic."

Daniel hesitated, not wanting to put Oma at risk in any way for his curiosity. He wouldn't put manipulation and misdirection past any of the Others, perhaps, but Ganos Lal had said directly that she wasn't here to keep an eye on him or Oma, so...

"Okay," he said, deciding he might as well have _someone_ to talk to while he tried to piece things together. "First of all, as many permutations as there are of everyone in the Arthurian legends, there are probably more of Morgan le Fay. She certainly seems to have spanned a very wide range of characters. I think it's fascinating."

"In some she is a sister or lover," Ganos Lal said, nodding, "in others, a healer or a spirit of the wild, and, in yet others, an evil witch."

"Usually some combination of those," Daniel said.

"Perhaps people did not know how else to explain all of her characteristics," she suggested.

Daniel nodded. "I'm sure that's true, but I wish I knew what her intentions were. No one is just an evil witch for no reason. I mean, she's just...she's against Merlin and Arthur most of the time, and Merlin was an Ancient, too, according to"--he raised his voice--"_what little about the Ancients the Others let me read!_" He returned to a normal volume. "But what about everyone else in Camelot? Was there some sort of war between them for power? Was she called evil because Arthur was the hero?"

Ganos Lal had pursed her lips, though he thought he saw a barely-concealed smile. "Yelling at the Others will not help you, Daniel Jackson," she advised.

"Yeah, I know," he said, and held up the book he was reading. "But wouldn't you be annoyed if your books had blank pages everywhere?"

She considered him, then said, "So I know now what interests you about Morgan le Fay. But why seek out her stories in the first place?"

He shrugged. "I'm just wondering about the Ancients, and she and Merlin are among the few names I have to go on. You know, the Ancients left so much...culture, and, and...and technology behind, and yet..."

"What?"

"I don't mind mysteries," he told her. "But I'm also not usually constrained to books with _blank pages!_" he yelled at the ceiling.

"It is not the search for answers the frustrates you," she observed, "but the fact that the answers are being deliberately withheld."

"Yeah," he agreed. "But it's okay. I've spent my whole career working around restrictions. I'll figure it out eventually. Hey--wait...you said you were alive during Morgan's time? And Merlin's, presumably."

She tilted her head, then corrected, "I had already Ascended by then...but yes, I did have some interest in observing the happenings on Earth at that time."

"During King Arthur's reign," Daniel said, reaching for another book as he spoke.

"Yes," she said. "Ambrosius Aurelianus. That is the Arthur of which you speak."

"Wow." Daniel stared at the pages. "What I don't understand," he said, "is why there were Ancients on Earth several hundred years ago. And if they _were_ there, why aren't they there anymore, or why aren't their descendants anywhere to be found?"

"Perhaps," Ganos Lal suggested, "they felt that it was not their place to take the Tau'ri's matters into their own hands."

"That's ridiculous," he said absently, scanning quickly down a page about Ambrosius Aurelianus--his history, his mythology, his links to Arthur, Uther, and Merlin... "Or, rather, I hope it's not true, because if it is, it means the Ancients are a lot more heartless than I always imagined."

She was quiet for a while after he said that. "Their time had passed," she finally said. "I suspect they felt it was time for them to leave."

Daniel looked up. "Oh, please. Help from the Ancients and their knowledge and technology could have prevented a lot of suffering. Merlin obviously thought that. He didn't have qualms about using his power--his genetic advancements or technology, whichever it was--to serve his cause. Or to serve his king and people, as the case was."

"Merlin, as you call him," Ganos Lal said, "was, in fact, Moros."

"Moros," Daniel repeated. "O...kay. That...doesn't mean anything to me."

"An Ancient," she clarified. "He merely took the appearance and identity of a Tau'ri, as Myrddin, Merlynum, Merlin. Can you tell me the implications of that?"

Feeling like he was being lectured, Daniel said, "So he lied. I'm all for letting the truth be known at all times, in theory. But if it takes a deception to do some good...well, given that I died on an undercover assignment, I can hardly say I don't understand that need."

But she shook her head. "It is not the deception that should disturb you, Daniel Jackson, but rather the fact that Merlin was the most powerful person on Earth then. Do you know what that kind of power can do to a man? The belief that he had the right to kill in the name of his chosen king, perhaps, or to manipulate events and politics to his liking? And what do the stories say of Myrddin?"

"They say a lot of things," Daniel said uneasily.

"That his abilities drove him mad, for example?" Ganos Lal prompted.

He nodded. "I guess so."

"Would you put a man above that simply because he was Ancient? Think of all that power in the hands of a man driven nearly mad with his obsessions."

Daniel leaned back in his chair, looking up at her thoughtfully. "Well, they say history is written by the victors," he conceded. "I guess it's not just Morgan's alleged story I should be questioning, but also Merlin's, since they were both lying in some ways. If one side was biased, the other probably was, too. He's depicted more ambiguously in the Prose _Merlin_ and the Vulgate Cycle, for instance."

"It's important to keep an open mind," she agreed.

"Wait, but...wait," he said, thinking. "If Merlin and Morgan were contemporaries, why do you say Merlin was the most powerful person on Earth, not both of them? In fact, a lot of the legends say he was her teacher, which implies he was more powerful--what does that really mean when you take the 'magic' assumption out of it? He was better at technology? He _had_ more technology? He had more political influence?"

She folded her hands on the table and looked at them, as if thinking. "That Merlin was more powerful than Morgan is a conclusion about which you should be suspicious," she said. "Perhaps Merlin was more inclined to use the advantages he had to solve the Tau'ri's problems."

"Which would...okay," he said. "So Morgan wasn't competing with Merlin, exactly; she was trying to stop him from using his technology to help people."

"Simplistic," Ganos Lal said, "but an adequate explanation."

Daniel made a face. "Then maybe I _do_ agree with Morgan's portrayal as the evil one, or the less good one." When she looked surprised again, he said, "You disagree?"

"Not every tragedy attributed to Morgan le Fay was truly her doing," she said.

"That's not the point--what _was_ she doing?" he countered. "Standing around, trying to stop the person who actually wanted to help people, even if he didn't always succeed? That's as bad as..." He flipped open to a page. "...as...uh...sending a plague to the planet Vagonbrei, for example--"

"That one wasn't Morgan's doing," Ganos Lal said. "It was a natural illness that the people of Vagonbrei blamed on her. In fact, Morgan was never on that planet at all. It's far more likely that Ambrosius and his knights--Merlin's pawns--were the ones who inadvertently carried the infectious parasite to Vagonbrei during their travels. It is all well and good to make an effort, but the deadly results of Merlin's exploits speak for themselves."

That was different. "Arthur was one of Merlin's pawns," Daniel repeated. That was a rather telling choice of interpretation.

Ganos Lal turned to Daniel's bookshelf and pulled out yet another book that he knew hadn't been there before. "Tales from Camelot," she said, handing it to him. "Perhaps you will find something rather different from the Tau'ri tales."

"There was a non-Tau'ri Camelot?" Daniel said excitedly, already opening the book.

"Next time we meet," she said, "perhaps we can discuss Merlin and Morgan again."

"Yeah, I'd love to--" Daniel started, looking up, then stopped. She had disappeared.

...x...

Once, the sound of whistling startled him, and he looked up to see a heavyset man in a trench coat scanning the shelves. As if noticing his gaze, the man paused, turned toward him, and winked.

Taken aback at the acknowledgement of his existence, Daniel looked around, saw no one, and pointed to himself, mouthing, _Me?_

The man shrugged. "Having a good time studying?"

"Uh...sure," Daniel said.

With a grin, the man in the trench coat waved, then disappeared.

Daniel frowned at the spot where he'd just been. "Huh," he said aloud.

The man appeared again a second later. "I'm Jim, by the way," he said, and then vanished again.

...x...

"Daniel," Oma said.

"I'm reading, Oma," Daniel said, not looking up.

"What did Ganos Lal want?" she said.

"We were _talking_. That's all." He glanced at her. "She offered to leave, you know. _I_ asked her to stay so we could talk."

Oma raised her eyebrows. "Let me guess," she said. "About Morgan le Fay."

"She knows a lot about Morgan," Daniel said, "although maybe it just seems that way in comparison because none of the Others will let me learn anything about the Ancients, and, by the way, Oma, neither will you, so _she's_ the only one telling me something useful."

The silence that followed pulled him away from his book to find Oma standing before him with her arms crossed.

"I didn't... I don't mean you've never told me anything useful," he said, a little guilty. "It's just--"

"You are becoming obsessed," Oma said coolly. "You've made progress, Daniel, but ever since you stopped brooding over the SGC this last time, you've done nothing but sit here and research the tales of King Arthur."

"I started that _before_ I met Ganos Lal," Daniel pointed out, "and that is _not_ all I do. Oma, you don't think she's corrupting me or anything? I asked her, and she said she's not spying on us."

"You..._asked_," she repeated, then unfolded her arms and closed her eyes. "Only you, Daniel, would ask a master of deception whether she was deceiving you."

"I'm not an idiot," he said. "But I tried to think of any loopholes in what she said and couldn't find anything. Direct dishonesty would probably be a bit of an impediment to the state of mind one needs to achieve for Ascension."

"That's not always true," she said.

"Really?" he said. Then again, he hadn't always been honest in his life--or afterlife--and _he_ was here, so perhaps he had to be more careful about how literally he took things.

Oma waved her hand. "But in her case, it probably is. Just remember--you can't trust her." She turned to leave.

Before she could walk out, Daniel said, "Well, then, how do I know I can trust _you_?"

She stopped.

Daniel stared at her unmoving figure and, for a moment, wondered if he was going to watch her turned back until she walked out. Still, even though he _did_ believe Oma was trustworthy, he didn't quite regret asking the question. "I would have thought," Oma said evenly, "that I've given you more than enough reason to trust me by now."

"And...and you have," he said quickly. "Look--I trust you. But I can't _dis_trust someone on your word alone without some reason. You know that."

Oma turned and leaned in the doorway to his library, her arms folded again over her chest. He wondered if she had modeled that mannerism after Jack or his other friends, too, like so many of the mannerisms she took on in here. "I told you before that each of the Others has a different opinion about the way things should be done. Ganos Lal is no exception."

"But...since the Others are always mad at you, isn't that a good thing, if she doesn't really agree with them, either?" Daniel said.

"There are many ways to disagree," Oma said. "Ganos Lal has at times followed a path more extreme than my own and at times followed the Others' laws in their strictest form."

"What do you think she wants?" he asked.

"That," she said, "I don't know. And that's why I don't trust her--why I wouldn't trust her with you if I had the choice to control your meetings with the Others."

Daniel thought about that. "It's not like the Others want to talk to me, for the most part," he said, "so you don't really need to worry about that."

"I am an outcast for what I do," Oma said matter-of-factly. "They paint you with the same brush, and you haven't given them a reason not to do so."

"Well, I'll be careful with Ganos Lal and...and whomever else I meet. I promise I will."

He could tell she wanted more than that--a promise to stop talking to any Others without supervision, perhaps--but she only nodded. "Do be careful around them," she said.

Before she could leave, two of the Others sitting in the corner looked up suddenly. Daniel froze, not sure whether he'd done something wrong, but the Others weren't looking at him--instead, they rose from their seats and walked away.

"What was that?" Daniel asked.

Oma shook her head. "Nothing you need to worry about."

"_Oma_," he said, exasperated.

"The Others like order," she allowed. "You're not the only one who likes to tweak their order sometimes. They're just going to keep an eye on things. It happens sometimes."

"Oh," Daniel said, and wondered if the Others could tell how much he wished he knew just what sort of disorder was going on and whether or not he could add anything to it.

XXXXX

It was when SG-1 was stuck on the Alpha Site with rebel Jaffa and Tok'ra that the real problem of Jacob and Lantash's blending surfaced. Selmak's presence might have calmed the masses, but Martouf and Daniel watched together as the Tok'ra began to whisper about what it meant to have a Tau'ri host blended with a symbiote who had spent so much time on Tau'ri.

"They do realize there's an assassin around, right?" Daniel said. "'The enemy of my enemy...'"

"The problem is that they do not know who their enemy is," Martouf pointed out. "That is one of the most dangerous skills of an _ashrak_, through either disguise or cloaking technology."

In the end, it _was_ the _ashrak_ who brought them all together, but not without a few casualties. "He needs to be careful," Martouf said, watching Jacob help with the cleanup when all was over. "Battle lines are being drawn, and some may fall between the Tok'ra's ideals and those of Earth."

"Which side do you think they'll come down on?" Daniel asked.

"The right one," Martouf said. "But I doubt it will be the easy one."

...x...

In any case, relations remained cordial enough that Malek helped when SG-1 met Egeria, the Tok'ra queen, during Jonas's first real mission on the team. Daniel fetched Martouf to watch, too, and the man was suitably awestruck as he saw Egeria for the first time. She seemed...wise. Merciful, kind, and just what he'd imagined the great Tok'ra queen would be like. It was easy to understand why she had gained the reputation on Earth of being a just advisor to a good king. Daniel wished he could have met her.

Besides, the Tok'ra and the SGC received a drug from her that could replace an immune system, the same way that a symbiote replaced the immune system of a Jaffa. No one could complain about that.

XXXXX

There was a...a _thing_.

Daniel didn't know what else to call it, but it was sort of dark and had lots of fire, although, since something was stopping him from going in (the Others, most likely), he supposed that was probably meant as a deterrent rather than a representation of reality. Or maybe it actually _was_ just that dark and fiery, which meant it was a place he wouldn't have wanted to go as a human. As an Ascended being with no physical flesh to be seared from his nonexistent bones, though, it might have been interesting, not least because someone clearly didn't want him to see it.

"Have you seen this?" Daniel asked when he'd dragged Martouf with him to look. "What _is_ it?"

"I don't know," Martouf said. "This is a galaxy far from any we saw on the lower plane."

"Maybe it's populated by fire-creatures."

Martouf seemed amused. "Or maybe," he said, "it does not fulfill the precise requirements for life to exist, and it is not populated at all."

"But then why can't we _see_ it?" Daniel pointed out. "You try it. Look more closely and see for yourself."

After Martouf had tried it and been rebuffed, he stopped and shrugged. "Have you asked Oma?"

Oma was on Kheb, as he'd expected, but when he sought her out, she had hidden herself away and a monk was speaking to a small party of Jaffa. Daniel stood back and waited.

After SG-1's brush with Oma on Kheb and the small army that had been sent to search for Shifu, the secret of Kheb had spread surprisingly fast and far. These days, it was almost impossible for any Jaffa not to know of the movement spawned by Bra'tac and Teal'c, and there were occasionally small groups of Jaffa who found their way to Kheb, too.

It had taken him some time to realize, but Oma didn't really have power anywhere but Kheb, at least not on the lower planes. Elsewhere, she could speak if she was careful about it--as she had done with Daniel while he had lain dying--and stop other Ascended from misusing their power--as she had done with Daniel on Abydos, to teach a lesson. Anything else, from lighting a candle to stirring a thunderstorm, was something she could only do on Kheb.

He rethought his assessment of the way she appeared when she visited him on his own terrain or anywhere other than on Kheb. Perhaps she conformed to the characteristics his mind expected--idioms, speech patterns--because she had no other choice, not because she was consciously picking his brain. Perhaps the Others had bound what abilities she had, except here on Kheb, and what was physical form to them now but something they chose and manipulated in their minds?

None of the Jaffa Ascended that day, but they would at least spread the word of Ascension and of Kheb to other Jaffa. If nothing else, it would undermine the Goa'uld even more.

"Yes?" Oma said once they were gone. "What do you need, Daniel?"

"There's this thing," Daniel said. "I can't figure out what it is."

She looked at him out of the corner of her eye. "I see," she said.

"Really?" he said.

"No," she said.

"Okay," he said, starting over. "I was wandering around, and there's this...it's like an entire block of existence I can't get into. At first, I thought it was just a couple of physical galaxies that were closed to me for some reason, but there are corresponding parts of the higher planes, too, and..." He trailed off, unsure how to explain, but she looked thoughtful. "You know what I'm talking about, right, that whole...thing?"

"Are you talking about origin?" Oma said.

Interested, he perked up. "Origin? Of what? Of life?"

She shook her head. "Daniel, if the Others are restricting your access to something, why would you think that _I_ would be able to tell you?"

"They don't watch you on Kheb," he said.

"Mm," she said. "Not completely true...but in this case, I'm not sure _I_ want you to know, either."

"Why would you _not_ want me to know something?"

"Because you have given me little reason to have confidence in what you would do with that knowledge," she said.

Frustrated, Daniel stood, noting that his robes had changed from that of Oma's disciples to his familiar Abydonian garb. Her eyes didn't leave him as he paced to the doorway of her temple and back. "How am I supposed to understand _anything_ when no one will tell me? I'm not even asking for answers--I'm just asking not to be _blocked_ when I _look_ for answers! At this point, Ganos Lal is the only one willing to give me information the Others are withholding."

"What?" Oma said, standing up. "Ganos Lal did what?"

"It was just a book."

"Tell me what she gave you," she said. "Daniel, _tell me_."

He took a breath and let it out slowly. More calmly, he explained, "There's not a lot on the Ancients that the Others will let me learn. I found a reference to a lost city, and it looked important, but I turned away, and as soon as I looked for it again, I couldn't find it. And of all the names I've found--like Chaya, Trebal--the only two I could match definitely to any legend or history were Merlin and Morgan le Fay--"

"Which is why you've been researching them lately," she said, nodding.

"--and still, the only references I have access to are books written by Tau'ri scholars, things I could've read on Earth if I'd chosen to. Ganos Lal gave me something on Camelot--the planet, not the one on Earth. It's not a straightforward history or anything groundbreaking; it's mostly stories passed down by Camelot's people, but still, it's _not_ a Tau'ri book, and it says some interesting things about Merlin. So I assume it's one of the things the Others weren't letting me see. It's not the first time she's given me a book to read, either."

"Ganos Lal just...gave information to you?" Oma said, frowning.

"Yes," Daniel said.

Oma folded her hands in front of herself and stared at the floor. Eventually, she shook her head. "I don't understand her," she said. "She follows the Others and yet pushes them further than any of us would dare."

Daniel shrugged. "Anyway, apparently the Others don't want me to know much about the Ancients, and they don't want me to know about that other place, either--the origin of...whatever it's the origin of. Are they afraid I'll do something wrong if I see whatever it is?"

"Probably," Oma said. "I warned you they would be wary of you, and that was _before_ you tried to help Jack O'Neill and Martouf Ascend."

"What about Martouf, then? He's been more obedient than I have, and he's been blocked, too."

"Martouf is still new here. I doubt it will be long before he is more accepted by the Others."

Daniel shook his head. "All of this starting to sound like _abo ragl ma slokha_. All anyone will tell me is that I have to listen because something horrible will happen if I disobey."

"_Abo_... The man with the burned leg?" she repeated, then said, "Ah. The monster who eats little children who don't listen to their parents. I suppose you were told that story often as a child."

"No," he said pointedly. "My parents didn't try to frighten me into submission with monsters. That didn't happen until I Ascended to some enlightened plane of existence."

Oma looked away from him for a moment, and then back. "That's too bad," she said. "And stop trying to guess an answer out of me."

XXXXX

Sam dreamed that she was in her lab, building a naquadria reactor. It wasn't the first time she'd dreamed of something like this--not necessarily with a reactor, but sometimes with a program or some crystals--and, for the first time, Daniel decided to slip in and join her in the one place he might talk to her without her being spooked.

Daniel leaned against the other side of the lab bench to watch her work. "Whoa, don't touch," Sam said, slapping his hand lightly when he ventured too near within her dream.

"How's it going?" Daniel asked.

"Well," Sam said, sounding optimistic, "if the results of the maclarium test pan out, I think we can extrapolate to make a pie with the naquadria and insert the filling directly into the reactor. It might go a long way toward stabilizing the hyperdrive we've been working on."

Trying not to grin, Daniel nodded solemnly. "Make sure you leave a slice for Jack."

"Nah," Sam said. "The colonel doesn't like naquadria. Too radioactive or something."

"Sounds like him," he agreed. "You think it'll work?"

"I'm hopeful," she said, shrugging. "Dad says it looks like it'll work."

Daniel balanced his chin in his hand as he watched her. "Oh? Has he visited lately?"

"He comes by sometimes," she said, shrinking a little bit until Daniel was staring at a young girl, no older than himself. "It's hard to talk to him, though. He doesn't _get_ it."

"He's going through a lot," Daniel said carefully. "What doesn't he get?"

Sam shrugged again, despondent, then straightened up and became her usual, tall self. "I'm a big girl, though. I'm fine. I mean, things are actually...pretty good. I'm happy for Martouf and all."

"You have friends," he told her. "The team. Janet. You can always talk to your friends if...you know, if you need to. Just because things are good, that doesn't mean they're easy. I know it's awkward with Jack sometimes, because of your positions, but--"

"I'm fine, really," she said, reaching up to ruffle his hair. With the casual, oblivious logic of dreams, she added, "Hey, by the way, where are you working these days? There's a fish tank on your desk."

"I noticed that," he said. "Do you think I could work here with you for a while?"

"Sure," Sam said easily.

Daniel opened a book and read, enjoying the familiar sound of her tinkering next to him.

"There's this new guy," Sam said suddenly. Daniel looked up and found that she was looking straight at him, her reactor gone. "Jonas. They're his fish."

"I know," Daniel said. "He really seems to like those fish."

"Yeah, he does," she said. She opened a tool drawer and dug through it. "I think we like him."

"Good," he said.

She stopped digging and looked at him again. "You think so?"

Daniel shrugged. "As long as he's got your six."

"He works hard, but he's not very experienced yet. Well, he survived Replicators, which were pretty nasty, but that's not really the same as most combat situations--"

"You guys can handle that. There are other things that are important, too."

Sam nodded. "Yeah, he's got our back. And I can talk to him about...about stuff."

"Then that's good," Daniel said.

"It's not the same," she said.

"Things change, Sam," he said. She nodded. "I miss you, too."

"Yeah." She smiled. "All right." He went back to reading beside her.

...x...

"Daniel," Oma sighed when she found him there. "Get out of her head."

Swallowing hard, Daniel closed his book and said, "Uh, Sam? I have to go now."

"Where?" she said, not looking up.

Did it matter what he said? Even if she remembered this in the morning, she would think nothing of it. "I have to sit in on SG-11's next mission briefing," he improvised.

"Oh, that's right," Sam said, as if she'd expected him to say that. "See you in the morning, then." She looked up and suddenly looked concerned. "Daniel, is something wrong?"

Daniel shook his head. "No, of course not," he lied. He quickly stood up and managed to give her a smile before he turned toward the door of her lab. "See you later, Sam."

"'Bye," she called after him.

...x...

Oma didn't look quite as angry as she could have when he finally stood before her. "Why do you do this?" she said.

Daniel stared at his feet.

"Look at me," Oma said.

He looked at her. "I just wanted to talk to her," he said.

"Manipulating a person's dreams..."

"I didn't do anything to change her opinions or influence her actions," he said.

"Maybe not," she said, "but this a dangerous road you're walking."

"I won't do it again," Daniel said. "Can I go?"

"Don't do it again," she warned. "Not frivolously like this." He nodded and turned away.

XXXXX

"What have you learned?" Ganos Lal said the next time they met. She paused, though, when she saw he was reading about the SGC, not about their shared pastime. "I don't mean to intrude--"

"No, it's okay," Daniel said, and held up his latest memo. "Do you know about the SGC on Earth?"

"A bit," she said, glancing at the sheet he was showing her.

"They're going public with the program," he said. "Well, slightly more public than before. Apparently, Anubis's threat is too great to conceal from the entire rest of the world anymore."

Ganos Lal raised her eyebrows but didn't look particularly interested in intraplanetary politics.

"There's a powerful man--politically powerful--trying to convince them to hand control of the Stargate to the NID," he explained. "That's a...an organization with sort of fuzzy and ill-defined morals. I suppose it would be considered a frivolous use of my powers if I dropped into the meeting to convince them otherwise?"

"You know the answer to that, Daniel Jackson," she said.

Daniel reluctantly put the memo down. "Right. Anyway--"

The library shivered around him, just for a second, then steadied again.

"Um," he said, looking around warily. Ganos Lal stiffened and glanced over her shoulder, then turned back, her gaze assessing. "I didn't do anything," he said quickly. "Is it just me, or was this not the first time that's happened lately?"

She folded her arms. "To whom have you spoken since your Ascension?" she asked.

A bit apprehensive, he said, "Not many people. You, Oma Desala, Shifu son of Sha'uri, Martouf. Um. Oh, one other person, too, called Jim, but that was literally an exchange of about three words. Why?"

"I was curious," Ganos Lal said, smiling briefly at him. "It is nothing to worry about."

But that wasn't it. There was more to it, but he really _hadn't_ done anything wrong this time and had come to understand that he wouldn't learn anything by pushing people for information. "Right," Daniel said again. His library had settled again, and there didn't seem to be anything he could do, so he put that aside. "Anyway, I read the book you gave me."

"And?"

"And I think you didn't like Merlin very much," he said. "Obviously, he wasn't perfect. Maybe he was a bit more evil than I'd thought--or, at least, more careless--but everything you've told me so far has been to make out Merlin as the wrongdoer, including the stories in this book."

"Perhaps he was," she said.

"Maybe," Daniel agreed. "I don't think it's that simple. I think you liked Morgan better--my question is '_why_?'"

Ganos Lal gazed impassively at him. "I think that Morgan tried very hard to do what she believed was right. And what is the conclusion you have drawn of Merlin?"

"That..." Daniel said slowly, thinking through the little he had been able to read and see, "...he tried to do what he thought was right, too. He had some sort of quest. This...this Sangreal thing, maybe, or whatever objective the Sangreal represents. I think he had good intentions and was...overzealous in his methods."

"Such as the Black Knight he created to guard his research," she said. "Many innocents were killed by that guardian."

"See? There you go again," he said, gesturing with a hand.

"I'm only speaking the truth," she said.

"Come on--Merlin's Black Knight guarded his research and killed people who tried to get at it, but Morgan le Fay had a whole set of traps and a _dragon_ to guard _her_..." Daniel frowned, paging back through the book he'd just been reading. "...her whatever she was hiding. No, wait! It says she was guarding the Sangreal, too! She..." He paused, thinking. "Huh. So Merlin was looking for some Holy Grail--metaphorical, I assume--and Morgan was trying to stop him from getting it. I guess I'd need to know what the Sangreal _was_ to make any sort of judgment."

"Perhaps it was dangerous," Ganos Lal suggested. "Perhaps she was protecting people from Merlin's misuse of it."

"That's possible. Still, consider what he accomplished," Daniel countered. "Whatever your opinion concerning Ambrosius, you have to admit Merlin helped his king and his people accomplish great things."

"They weren't his people," she pointed out.

"That didn't make them less important," he answered immediately, and then stopped as her words sank in. That was a phrase he'd heard before--recently, in fact, and rather often, though not specifically in reference to the Ancients. "Wait. What _was_ Merlin searching for that was so important, this Sangreal?" he asked.

Ganos Lal hesitated, then said, "A weapon--one far too powerful to put in the possession of one man, especially one who was willing to decide it was right to help a king kill thousands as a stepping stone on the path to accomplishing his goal. Can you imagine the destruction that kind of power would cause?"

He could, all too clearly. Still... "Pardon my bluntness," he said, "but this is what annoys me about all of you up here. If Merlin was so terrible, why didn't you step in and stop him?"

Instead of the same old answer, though, she said, "Morgan le Fay did that adequately."

"Right, I noticed," Daniel said. "But...why?"

"She was an Ancient, just as Merlin was," Ganos Lal reminded him. "What he did came dangerously close--too close--to exposing himself as a superior being to the Tau'ri. Ambrosius and his knights already followed his every whim; someone had to stop him from going too far."

Daniel closed the book. "A _superior being_? He was human, too--just with better technology."

"I meant that he was more powerful than they were, not that he was possessing of some moral superiority," she clarified. "The result is the same. In any case, Merlin was something rather more than human."

"He was Ascended, wasn't he?" Daniel demanded. "That's why he had more power than everyone else around; that's why it was millennia after the Ancients died out but he was still around. That's why Ascended beings like you think he was the villain for stepping in."

"He...was not Ascended, no," Ganos Lal said.

"But...wasn't he an Ancient?" he asked, confused. "They'd died out or left by then, hadn't they?"

Ganos Lal raised her eyebrows. "He _was_ an Ancient. He was simply...more than that, as well."

Daniel pushed down his irritation when it became clear this was one of those things she wasn't going to tell him. "And Morgan le Fay?" he said. "Was she 'more than Ancient,' too?"

"Morgan was very likely more powerful than Merlin at the time," she said, "but held back for fear of doing too much, like he did."

"Then she was a coward," he said.

"Do you feel Merlin's ends justified his means?" she said.

Taken aback, Daniel said, "I don't know. I think it depends on what those ends were--sometimes, someone just has to act. But when there were lives at stake, I don't think Morgan's _means_ justified her end."

"Why should Merlin have been allowed to decide who should live and how?" she said, her tone more curious than condemning.

"He had the power to help!" Daniel said.

"Having power does not mean that one must use it," she replied.

Incredulous, he gaped at her for a minute, not sure why he was so surprised--it was what he'd been hearing all along, after all, but it was the first time he'd heard someone say it so plainly. "So the way you see it," he said, "Morgan was the good one, because even if she had the power to stop a disaster, she would have stood by and let people die instead." When she started to answer, he barreled on, "I mean, no, sure, it's okay, because they were inferior to her, right?"

"You are understandably equating their dilemma to your own difficulties in obeying our rules," Ganos Lal said. "But--"

"I'll equate it to whatever I want!" he burst out. He'd had this same argument before with Oma, but at some point, it had started to sound less convincing. "It's like the Tollan for...for looking down on people less advanced than they are, and all of you for--"

"And what of your SGC?" she countered. "Have they not, in the past, refused to disclose information or trade technology for fear that another lesser society would use it for evil?"

"At least we never called another human society the 'lesser,'" he said, "and okay, some people probably thought it in private, but we don't make policy based on judgments of worth. We gave aid when we could, even if we didn't always give weapons--"

"Because you feared they would be misused," Ganos Lal said, taking a step closer, and if Daniel had been any less frustrated with everything, he might have been intimidated.

"Because if the SGC ever _did_ something to unbalance another society, _they_ didn't have the power to control or...or solve the situation afterward," he said. "The SGC has themselves to defend, and that has to be their first concern. But Morgan and Merlin had all that power. Maybe if more had taken Merlin's path and he hadn't had to avoid Morgan all the time, the Ancients could've accomplished more! This is so typical of you Ascended beings, that you'd think Merlin was wrong for trying to help. You'd rather sit by and watch instead of using your power to do good."

She frowned disapprovingly at him but did not argue directly with his point. "You are one of us now, Daniel Jackson--you hinder only yourself when you speak of 'we' and 'you.'"

"Funny how it doesn't seem like I'm one of you," he said, irritated. "_I'm_ treated as an inferior being to all of you. What is it you're all so ashamed of that you don't want me to see?"

"Perhaps it is not our shame," she said, her voice suddenly, absolutely emotionless so that he couldn't even tell if she was hiding something, "but rather our fear of what you would do with that kind of power in your hands. You are not incorruptible, Daniel Jackson, just because you managed to achieve Ascension."

He stared at her, realizing what he should have realized long ago. "You don't want me here," he said flatly, very firmly not caring what they thought. "You and all the Others. I'm the...the bastard child among all you pure-hearted people. That's why there are so many restrictions on me--why I can't find things they don't want me to learn."

"Do you know why it is forbidden for one Ascended being to help a mortal Ascend?" she said. "Those who are truly good will achieve Ascension on their own, as was done--"

"Well, things change," he snapped. "The problem is with existing for so long... It's the same thing the Goa'uld and the Asgard have suffered: you _don't change_ and you stop questioning things, and then when the universe changes around you, you sit back and shake your heads in disapproval until those changes sneak up and stab you in the back."

"Is that what you truly believe, Daniel Jackson?"

"Yes!"

"And where," Ganos Lal said, "would you draw the line to decide where to stop? Change is very well, but there is potential for great evil among those like us."

"I thought no one could get here without being 'good at heart,'" he bit out.

"Yet some have."

"Well, I'm sorry to be the stain on your pure-hearted world."

She frowned. "I wasn't talking about you."

"Let me ask you something," he said. "If you saw a village on the lower planes dying of an illness, would you save them?"

"I could not," she said.

"Yes, you could!" he snapped. "You _wouldn't_."

"It is not for me--or for any of us--to meddle in the ways of nature," she said. "There is a balance that cannot be disrupted."

"Then you would have as good as killed them," he said. "You know what? If that's what you mean by 'truly good,' then I'm _proud_ that you don't count me among your exalted number."

"You would interfere in the life and death of millions," Ganos Lal said. "Is that correct?"

Daniel rubbed a hand over his face in frustration. "No. Maybe. I know it's wrong on some level, so you don't have to quote the reasons at me. But...but maybe it's just as wrong _not_ to. I don't know how much I can take of doing nothing because of a set of rules I'll never fully understand."

"You are not the only one who feels that way," she told him. "But I would take great caution with those views."

"Right--it's evidence of my impurity, yes? Is _that_ why I can't find any of the Others to talk to them? Even when they come here to spy on me, they _still_ won't talk to me."

"I have told you before," Ganos Lal said, "that I am not here to spy on you."

"Then _why_ are you _here_?" he demanded.

She was still infuriatingly calm in the face of his growing anger. "You speak from the heart," she said. "I find you intriguing."

"You shouldn't listen to me, then," he said darkly. "Whatever comes out of my impure heart might taint yours."

"I didn't mean to say that you don't deserve Ascension," Ganos Lal said. "I believe you are essentially good, but you must understand that there are rules that--"

"Thank you for the books," Daniel said. "I appreciate the help."

He wasn't looking at her anymore, so all he could feel was her consideration on him as he returned to looking at his news on the SGC. It felt childish, but he didn't really care--unless he adopted their way of thinking, he was never going to be anything _but_ a child and a problem to them, and at the moment, the thought of willingly being like them was terrifying.

Finally, a book was placed gently on the desk next to him. He glanced at it--another one he'd never seen before about Merlin and the quest for the grail--but before he could ask Ganos Lal about it, she had disappeared.

A low whistle came from the doorway.

Daniel looked up tiredly and saw the grinning, large man in the trench coat he'd met briefly that one time before, this time leaning casually in his doorway. _Jim_, Daniel remembered. "They're really somethin', huh?" Jim said, jerking a thumb out the door as if Ganos Lal had actually, physically walked out that way.

"Uh," Daniel said. Despite himself, he looked around to see if there was someone else in the room.

"I'm talking to you, kid," Jim said, chuckling. "Can I come in?"

"Uh," Daniel repeated, then shook himself and said, "Well, yeah, I guess. Sure. Come in."


	8. Part III: Enlightenment, 3 of 5

**Part III (cont'd)**

Jim produced a pair of cups from somewhere and pointed to a steaming pot of coffee Daniel hadn't realized was there. "You mind if I help myself? I'll get you a cup, too."

"Okay," Daniel said, thoroughly lost. "That's not really coffee, though." It seemed he had metaphysical coffee brewing in his subconscious. Jack would have found it hilarious.

With a mischievous wink, Jim ignored the pot and filled both cups with a snap of his fingers before setting them down on the table. "To the well-prepared mind..." he started, then shrugged. "Ah, you know how it goes. The coffee's just the way you like it, promise. Your mind, after all."

Daniel stared. "Right. So, who exactly are you?"

"Oh--that was rude of me," Jim said, extending a hand. "Call me Jim."

"No, I remember, you came by before," Daniel said, shaking the man's hand. "I'm--"

"Daniel Jackson," he said, still smiling. "I know about you, of course. You're, uh, the guy who's really bad at following the rules, if you don't mind my saying."

"I guess you could say that," he admitted, a little wary. He picked up his cup and drank from it, despite knowing it wasn't there and that he could make it taste like anything he wanted--the imagined action made things feel more normal, like he was home instead of stranded here where he wasn't sure he belonged and everyone else was sure he _didn't_ belong. "Why, what are you going to do?"

"Me?" Jim said, looking surprised, then laughed, waving a hand dismissively. "Ah, I'm not gonna do anything to you, kid."

"Please don't call me that," Daniel heard himself say.

Jim raised an eyebrow as he settled himself into a chair, studying Daniel. "Oh. Jack O'Neill used to call you 'kid.' Yeah, everyone misses the little things about being alive--don't sweat it."

"Look," Daniel said, "if you're just here to tell me how unenlightened I am..."

"No, you've really got the wrong idea about me," Jim insisted. He looked over his shoulder, then folded his hands on the table and leaned in close to Daniel. "I know how you feel. These guys up here..." He shook his head. "Gets on your nerves sometimes, doesn't it? Especially for someone like you...well, it's gotta sting."

"What do you mean, 'someone like me?'" Daniel said. "How do you people always know things about me?"

"Well, all knowledge is..._out there_," Jim said, gesturing vaguely with a hand. "Not hard to find once you know how. And you..." He drummed his fingers on the desk for a minute, as if searching for the right words. "It's like this," he finally said. "You're a catalyst."

Daniel felt his eyebrows shoot up. "I beg your pardon?"

"Not just _you_, obviously," Jim said. "But you don't get onto the big, bad SG-1 without that, uh...that spark of adventure. Jack O'Neill can start a revolution among aliens without even trying, Carter's a revolution in science on her own, Teal'c's _the_ vanguard of the Jaffa uprising, and you...well, you push things, don't you? Everything you find, you can't help but _push_. They tell you not to rock the boat, so you go and rock five boats instead."

"I've been told that before," Daniel conceded, beginning to warm to the man's casual demeanor after no contact with anyone but Oma, Shifu, and Ganos Lal for a long time. He hadn't found this kind of casual conversation since he'd been alive. "I don't see what your point is, though."

Jim shrugged. "Listen, kiddo--ah! Daniel," he amended with a wink. "You stir things up. And that's the way you like it, isn't it? Count how many major events in the galaxy you've started just by opening your mouth. Not alone, of course, but you did as much as you coulda done, under the circumstances--I mean, the SGC put you on the bench as much as the Others do."

"That was different," Daniel said, starting to wonder just how many people had been watching him while he had been alive.

"Not really," Jim said. "The Others think they're protecting you, too, and don't tell me you didn't scare SGC as much as you scare the Others. They thought you were going to screw things up all the time."

"To be fair," he said, "I did screw up quite a lot, especially in the beginning."

"Sometimes, someone's just gotta take that risk," Jim said. He pointed a finger at Daniel. "And you were the one who took 'em, even before they said you were allowed to. Some of these Others could learn a thing or two from people like you. Someone's gotta push the limits, and you've just always gotta go that one step further, don't you, Daniel?"

"Are you...consciously quoting Jack O'Neill?" Daniel said, but he was more amused than annoyed. Not only was Jim actually _talking_ to him, but he was also the first Daniel had seen of one of the Others who didn't act like...well, like all the rest of the Others.

Jim shrugged. "I'm just saying. It's gotta--"

A bookshelf fell with a clatter.

Daniel jumped, staring at the messy pile of books on the floor in amazement. "What...how...how does that happen if this whole room is in my _mind_?" He stood, intending to pick it back up, and found it restored to its original place before he could take more than a step.

"Ah-ha!" Jim said, snapping his fingers. "That's the beauty of it. Well, not _beauty_, in the sense of something good...although I suppose that depends on your view."

"I'm not sure I follow."

"That's because you haven't really figured out the way things work around here. You're looking at this whole Ascension business as a way to gain knowledge, but you still don't _get_ it. Don't get me wrong; it's a good start. You just got here. But do you think the Others need to look things up when they want to know something?"

"No," Daniel said. "But these aren't real books. They're just...representations."

"But once you've really got all this down, you'll _know_ what you want to know because you understand how everything around you works, not because you had to look for it. I don't mean just that instinctive understanding of trinkets you get when you peek into the labs in your SGC. You're overlooking entire dimensions."

"Uh," Daniel said. "What does this have to do with that minor earthquake just now?"

"Eventually," Jim said, "you'll understand what disturbances like that mean without having to ask. That was just a representation, too, except it meant that something big was happening--something on the higher planes that everyone except newer folks like you just _knew_ about right away." Just as Daniel was about to sigh in resignation--it seemed Jim wasn't going to explain it, either--Jim explained, "Now, in this case, that was what happens when someone screws up so badly that he gets...well, punished."

"Punished? Really," Daniel said, turning his attention back to the other man and surprised that he was getting an answer after having been brushed off about this by both Oma and Ganos Lal.

"It's a rare event, you know," Jim told him. "That's why it seems to have so much effect, rippling through your little private room here. Well. It _used_ to be rare. There have been a _lot_ of incidences lately. Funny--it just happens to coincide with your stay up here."

"What--I didn't do anything," Daniel protested. "And it's not like I could've influenced anyone; practically no one even talks to me."

"First of all, some of those ripples _have_ been you. That thing Oma did to you when she dragged you to Abydos and yelled at you, rumblings among the Others every time you sit around next to SG-1 and 'talk to yourself.'" Jim made quotes in the air, winking again to show what he thought of Daniel's subliminal influences. He grinned and leaned back in his chair. "It's not just you; a few others stick their necks out, too. Now, some _them_ have probably been encouraged by the stuff you do, and some...well, some people just have their own tipping point, that's all."

With a bit of dread--and some excitement--gathering, Daniel echoed, "'Tipping point?'"

"You know," Jim said, shrugging again, "that point when you decide you've had enough of the Others and this path and all their rules."

"But what does that _mean_?" Daniel said. "I assume it's more harsh than what Oma does for punishment. What happens to people who just get fed up?"

"Well, I can't predict _everything_," Jim said. "It depends. I'm just saying--that's what the rumblings are about. If the Others weren't acting like you had the plague, you might hear them gossiping about it, too. Let me tell you, it's not making you any more popular up here."

Indignant, Daniel said, "That's ridiculous! That's not even me. I haven't done _anything_." Mostly.

"Sure you have," Jim said, laughing. "You've been poking at everything you can get away with."

"Yeah, but...not something...really big," he said, feeling stupid. "I haven't caused disturbances that ripple across realities yet."

"But there's a 'yet,'" Jim said, raising an eyebrow. "Isn't there? Isn't there a point when you'd throw up your hands and say 'to hell with it?'"

Daniel considered that and thought he might be closer to that point than Jim realized.

"You wouldn't be the first," Jim went on. "Even Oma's gotten pretty close a few times. There are other Ascended beings who've gone back down to the lower planes--"

"What?" Daniel blurted, startled.

"Oh, yeah--you didn't know you could do that?"

"Not...well, I guess I knew, but I never thought about that. No one ever mentioned it."

Jim gave him an understanding smile. "You mean, _Oma_ never mentioned it. She wouldn't want her little army getting ideas, deciding it was okay to jump ship."

Daniel opened his mouth, and then closed it. There wasn't any good way to answer that.

"To be fair, most who get here don't _want_ to give all this up," Jim conceded. "But if you want to, you can retake human form and go back down there. 'Course, sometimes, the Others just kick a guy out and leave him in stranded human form somewhere, whether he wants it or not."

"Like Orlin of Velona," Daniel said, wondering why he hadn't thought of that before and then wondering why he was so interested in it now. Was Orlin around somewhere? Was he laying low until the Others stopped watching him so closely, or had he committed one of those rippling 'disturbances?' "Well, he chose human form--of his own will--and then tried to settle on Earth centuries after the Others exiled him."

"Like that," Jim agreed. "Orlin, you said? Don't know him. Why'd he get exiled?"

Daniel made a face. "He gave people defense technology, and they misused it."

Sighing Jim said, "Good intentions. You'd think they'd count for something, eh?"

"Yeah, exactly! The Others wiped out that planet to punish Orlin--and, I mean, the people had arguably become corrupt, but there must've been better ways to deal with the situation."

"Makes you think real hard about some things," Jim said soberly, shaking his head. "After all you've seen and done down there, it's gotta be annoying, how these Others sit around doing nothing. I mean, have you seen the news?"

"What news?" Daniel asked.

In answer, Jim sat back, reached into his coat, and pulled out what looked like a newspaper. "Here," he said, handing it over, "take a look at this."

Daniel frowned, but finally accepted it and opened it to the front page. It didn't take long for one word from a headline to catch his attention. "Anubis," he blurted.

"Heard of him?" Jim said.

"If only I hadn't," Daniel muttered, hastily skimming the article. He glanced up and confided, "If it hadn't been for Anubis's recruiting Osiris and Zipacna and then interrupting a...a really important meeting with the System Lords...well, I might still be alive."

Jim tutted sympathetically. "Anubis is a nasty one, all right," he agreed.

"It says he's found the...Eye of Osiris and the Eye of Seth," Daniel read, glancing up. "I don't, uh... Do you know what that means?"

Leaning close again, Jim said, "You mean...you don't know about the Eyes?"

"Um..." Daniel said. "No."

"Really?" Jim pressed, raising his eyebrow. "The SGC's _never_ heard of the six Eyes?"

"What are the six Eyes?" Daniel said. "I assume you're not talking about biological eyes."

That reminded him of something, though. He frowned, trying to remember when he'd heard that before...he'd been with Robert Rothman at the time, and they had been with SG-1, too, and SG-11, and... _'Not literally a biological eye,'_ Robert had said, and Teal'c had answered, _'It could be a Goa'uld weapon.'_

Oh.

Jim raised his eyebrows. "They're weapons," he whispered, as if confiding a secret. "Anubis is looking for 'em. The SGC's got some of 'em safe, though, right? I mean, I'd hope so."

_The Eye of Tiamat_, Daniel thought, but... "Why would you think the SGC knows about these Eye...things, much less has any of them?"

"So...so the SGC _doesn't_ have any?" Jim said.

"What are you doing here?" Oma's voice cracked sharply from the doorway.

Jim rolled his eyes before turning around to face her. Even as he puzzled over Jim's words, Daniel found himself resenting her interference even more than usual--_finally_, someone was talking to him freely, and she was stepping in again. "Oma," Jim said. "It's so good to see you. You never visit me anymore."

"You know the rules," Oma said, taking a step inside. "Get out. Now."

"Oma--" Daniel started.

"No, no, it's okay," Jim said, turning his head enough to give Daniel a rueful smile and a wink. "I'll get out of your way."

"Good," she said coldly.

"Oma!" Daniel repeated.

"Silence, Daniel," she ordered.

"But we were only--"

Jim held up his hands and began to make his way out before their argument could truly start. "I'm going, I'm going," he said. "I know you like him more than me." As he passed her, he added, "I hate when you play favorites, Mother." Oma stiffened but, oddly, made no move to hurry him along. "Well, I guess I should be on my way."

He disappeared out the door before anyone could speak up again, but as soon as he was gone, Daniel asked, "What was that about? Is he one of yours?"

"Don't listen to him," Oma said.

"Am I supposed to listen to _anyone_ but you?" he said, annoyed. "He was going to tell me about Anubis." He turned to flip idly through the newspaper Jim had just given him, hoping to find some other information about these Eyes when a name caught his attention. "Oh no."

Oma looked once more out the door, then walked to his table. "What is it?"

"Anubis has set up a trap for a group of Jaffa rebels on Kresh'tar," Daniel said, glancing up from what he was reading. "They're going to walk into an ambush. Which means..."

Daniel closed his eyes, searching for whatever he could see of the SGC and the happenings in the Milky Way...

Teal'c was dressed in traditional Jaffa robes, as he did when he wanted to remind his brethren that he was Jaffa as well as SGC, and he was alone, lying on the ground. Wait--not alone. Daniel tried harder, and the scene resolved into better clarity. Teal'c wasn't alone at all; he was surrounded by corpses of Jaffa, already dead. Daniel's first, panicked thought was that someone had managed to synthesize another batch of the symbiote poison and used it, until he realized that there were no symbiotes in the Jaffa, dead or otherwise, and that these Jaffa bore signs of struggle.

And there was a tear in the front of all of their robes, armor tossed aside, exposing the gaping pouch in their abdomens. Someone had gathered the rebels and stolen their symbiotes...

Except Teal'c's. Perhaps he had gotten there late or somehow survived the main attack, but his symbiote was still alive. Teal'c reached into his own pouch and pulled his larval Goa'uld out, and Daniel winced, unable to believe what he was seeing until he saw the symbiote being lowered into another very familiar, not-quite-dead Jaffa's abdomen. Bra'tac, too, was alive, then--just barely, but still there.

_[Hold on, old man,]_ Teal'c whispered, and then, _[Help me.]_

"There has to be something," Daniel said, turning back to find Oma watching him sympathetically. "I can...I could do _something_, right?"

"You can't save Teal'c," she said.

"So you know what's happening, too," he said. "You've been watching my friends?"

"I have to keep track of them to keep track of you," she said.

"Well, when were you planning to tell me!"

Unmoved, she said, "Daniel, a Jaffa cannot live without his symbiote. He can't survive that."

"Maybe he can," Daniel said.

"You know Jaffa biology as well as I do, Daniel--"

"You don't know Teal'c! He's strong. If anyone could survive until SG-1 mounts a rescue, it would be Teal'c."

"Teal'c's actions were his own choice," she said. "_He's_ choosing to share his symbiote with Bra'tac, and you can't take that choice away from him. Is that what he would want?"

Instead of answering, Daniel looked back to where Teal'c and Bra'tac were both clinging feebly to life. He started to answer Oma, only to stop and look again, more deeply. "He's...dreaming," he said, surprised.

"Well. He's delirious," Oma said. "Close enough."

"It's the _m'al sharan_ dream," he said. "The last rite, when...when a Jaffa's symbiote is removed--"

"It's delirium, Daniel," she said, "no matter what the name. It's called the 'last rite' for a reason."

As a thought struck him, he turned back to look at her. "Dreams teach. You taught Shifu that--dreams teach. I can go and comfort a friend on the brink of death, can't I?"

"Not if you want the Others to stop seeing you as a problem," she said.

"Maybe I don't care about the Others anymore," he retorted. "If I'm doing anything you wouldn't justify doing yourself, then stop me."

Without waiting for a response, he found Teal'c and Bra'tac again and slipped away into his friend's mind.

XXXXX

Daniel teetered when he first arrived. He'd jumped into Sam's dream once before, as well as Martouf's subconscious, but those had been fairly normal, as dreams went. Even with Daniel's own stabilizing presence, however, the world in Teal'c's dream was a much more confusing one.

Teal'c was in the men's locker room. That wasn't odd in and of itself, but the locker room wasn't quite the familiar one from the SGC, and Teal'c didn't look like Teal'c, except superficially. He was slouching in his seat, head hanging, forearms balanced carelessly on his knees. Daniel didn't even have to see that he was missing his gold tattoo to think he didn't look particularly like a Jaffa warrior. In fact, with that air about him and the uniform tossed over the bench beside him, he looked more like a human--

Oh. He recognized this now. This was like some of those television shows Teal'c had watched, with the people who did...something important and heroic. Police? Field medics?

Daniel eyed the uniform with some trepidation and still wasn't completely sure what kind of personnel Teal'c was imagining himself as until he saw the mask. He was familiar enough with hazmat suits, and this didn't match, so Teal'c must be some other kind of person who wore heavy-duty uniforms with air masks who worked in buildings with large red trucks...

A _firefighter_.

Well, if Teal'c wasn't going to fight tyrannical aliens in his dream, he _would_ pick something like fire to fight.

As Teal'c stood with a sigh, rubbing at his head, Daniel took a moment to wonder just how much time his friend actually spent watching television and how Daniel was supposed to try to fit into this dream without seeming drastically out of place. Anything else, and he would be breaking too many rules, even by Oma's standards.

Daniel and Teal'c had always tried to fit into Tau'ri society in different ways, whether it was through formal texts or direct observation of behavior or perusal of fictional media. They each understood different facets of Tau'ri society.

At least...they understood it in theory.

The sound of a door opening caught his attention, and Daniel turned to see Jonas Quinn entering the locker room. "Hey, T-man," Jonas said, pulling off a garish, pink apron with an exaggerated groan of relief. "Ready to get outta here?"

Daniel blinked.

"Hm?" Teal'c said absently, and then shook himself. "Oh...yeah. Yeah, I'm going home, probie."

"And, uh...are you sure you're okay?" Jonas said. "This whole transplant thing is--"

"I said I'm fine," Teal'c repeated tightly. "Shift's over, man. Go home. You need a lift?"

Closing his eyes, Daniel silently cursed Jack for introducing Teal'c to the art of watching--and absorbing--television. This was going to take some thought.

...x...

The hardest part about Teal'c's dream was that it was remarkably coherent at times and yet very inconsistent. Teal'c walked out of the firehall and into the SGC as if it were normal, then went to bed and woke up yet somewhere else. Daniel considered entering at some point while the dream was in the SGC--at least he understood that--but wasn't sure whether he would be recognizable as himself. Daniel didn't seem to have a lot of control over what happened in here--and he was wary about trying to force control--and if he appeared as someone whom Teal'c would expect to act in a certain way, it would be harder to break out of that character.

Adding to the confusion was that Teal'c's mind apparently liked to do masochistic things like getting him caught in an explosion. Daniel couldn't remember ever having had dreams in which he'd knocked himself unconscious, but as he saw Teal'c being taken to the hospital, an idea began to form.

Surely a civilian hospital wasn't too different from an on-base infirmary, especially a hospital conjured up by Teal'c's mind. He could deal with that.

The hospital appeared half-formed as Teal'c's dream-self woke. Daniel wandered through the shifting corridors but paused when he saw Bra'tac in one room, with Shan'auc helping him into a wheelchair. Neither of them had tattoos, so Daniel supposed they weren't Jaffa, either.

"...just doing his job, Bray," Shan'auc was saying. "He was trying to save a life."

Bra'tac harrumphed. "He was being stupid," he snapped. Daniel rolled his eyes--Teal'c certainly knew his friends.

"Come on," she said, with the patience of someone who had heard something many times and didn't care to argue it anymore, "we'll go see him. You can yell at him yourself."

"He had better hope he's not all right. If he is, I'll hurt him myself," Bray said darkly. She paused just a little too long before continuing to fuss with his robe, not meeting his eyes. "Shauna? He's all right?"

"I...I'm sure it's..." Shauna stammered, then stopped and gave him a smile. "Don't worry, Bray."

"Shauna..." he warned, clamping his hands on the wheels to stop her when she began to push the chair. "Tell me."

She sighed. "It's just...he's been having nightmares lately. Don't give me that look; it's not your fault. It's probably just stress from work--they say he was hallucinating on that last job."

"Or maybe," Bray grumbled, finally letting go of his chair and letting her push him out, "it's because of that kidney he's planning on giving me."

_Ah-ha_, Daniel thought, and then wondered how in the world someone could give his internal organs to someone without killing himself. Weren't kidneys important? Did Tau'ri hospitals allow that? Unless...were kidneys the ones that grew back? No, that was the liver--he remembered that one because of the myth of Prometheus and his regenerating liver.

"Jack says he knows a psychiatrist..." she answered, her voice fading as they disappeared around the corner.

Daniel slunk back to wait, knowing that, unless Teal'c's dream suddenly shifted again, he would probably come up here himself at some point to visit.

He looked around, reluctant to leave yet, then decided it was more important to understand what was going on. He needed to formulate a working plan and make himself sound convincing to Teal'c--and he really hoped Teal'c didn't know as much about medicine as he seemed to know about firemen.

...x...

It didn't take long for Teal'c to return with Shauna and Bray. Daniel entered the dream partially again and waited for them to disappear into Bray's room before allowing himself to manifest, too, wearing the same gown he had seen Bray wearing. The corridors shifted from time to time, especially when Teal'c wasn't looking directly at them, and Daniel had to concentrate to stay where he was.

"...see you later, Bray," Teal'c was saying.

Daniel snapped his attention back and hurriedly positioned himself around the corner at the end of the hall. As Teal'c's footsteps came closer, he stepped out, just in time to crash hard into Teal'c and fall over onto the floor.

"Oh, geez," Teal'c said, bending over him. "I'm sorry--are you okay?" His hands hovered anxiously over Daniel but didn't touch him, perhaps noting his garb and afraid to do any damage.

To his own surprise, Daniel felt himself wince and groan, "Oh god," without meaning to. Wrestling back some control over Teal'c's dream, he added, "I mean...it's okay. I should've been looking where I was...going...um..."

"Here, let me help you," Teal'c said, gently helping Daniel to his feet. Recalling his appendectomy to mind, Daniel wrapped an arm loosely around his midsection as he rose, knowing Teal'c wouldn't miss the action.

"No--I'm, uh..." Daniel said, taking a second to steady himself by leaning back against the wall. "I'm okay. Thanks."

As he'd expected, Teal'c was eyeing his stance suspiciously and said, "Did I hurt you? You should go back to your room, have someone check you out--"

"I'm fine," he snapped without thinking, a bit unsettled when he actually started to feel something like pain in his side, along with the tight, hot feeling of irritated stitches--the realism of Teal'c's dream was disconcerting. At the startled look on Teal'c's face, he added, "Sorry. I...I just had a kidney removed, so, um. But, uh...I'm good now. Talking a walk."

When Teal'c seemed to be wavering between leaving a stranger in peace and helping a patient he'd run into, Daniel let out another tiny wince and swayed slightly into the wall. "Let me walk you back, all right?" Teal'c said worriedly. "Or at least get someone else to help you, man."

Daniel waited just long enough not to seem too eager, then nodded once, tightly. "Yeah, okay," he mumbled.

Teal'c walked him slowly back to his room. "So," he said as they went, his voice oddly timid for someone usually so sure of himself. "Did you say...a kidney?"

"Mm-hm," Daniel said, finding that he could guide the dream if he concentrated hard enough and didn't try to stray outside the parameters of Teal'c's setting, which only made the walls start to melt in a rather frightening way. "This is the nephrology floor, right? My brother's kidneys were failing, and it turns out you only need one. What are _you_ in for?"

He earned a sideways look for that. Daniel blinked innocently and hoped his face was at least a _little_ familiar in some part of Teal'c's mind, enough to break through and invite confidence. Finally, Teal'c looked away and shook his head, giving a short, not-quite-amused huff. "Would you believe it's for the same thing?"

Daniel automatically scoffed and then winced, feeling the pull of phantom sutures in his flesh. Teal'c slowed even more, so Daniel cleared his throat, concentrated, and started walking again. "Seriously?" Daniel said after a moment. "The transplant thing?"

"Indeed," Teal'c said. Daniel looked up at him--the word was out of place in the pattern of speech they'd both taken on here--but Teal'c didn't seem to notice anything out of the ordinary. "How's your brother doing now?"

"Uh...well..." Daniel dithered, then decided to be as honestly vague as he could about his imaginary brother. Maybe Teal'c would fill in the blanks for him with the right prompting. "I don't really know, exactly. They said it was normal for him to be a little sick at first, but they're worried about...uh--"

"Rejection?" Teal'c said.

"Sure," Daniel said. "I mean, yeah, that's what they said. Guess you got the same talk."

"From about four different doctors," Teal'c agreed, rolling his eyes. It took all of Daniel's concentration not to stare at the odd sight of a smiling, anxious, casual Teal'c.

"It's just...I'd do anything for him," Daniel continued, latching onto any opening Teal'c would give him. "But the doctor said it's still risky, and..." He let out a sigh and admitted, "Actually, I don't have a clue what's going on."

Teal'c grinned widely at that. "Know exactly how you feel..." He paused. "Uh..."

"Oh--I'm Daniel Jackson," he said. "I'm a student at...at the university."

"Hey, good for you," Teal'c said warmly. "What're you studying?"

Daniel almost said 'linguistics,' his usual cover story, but a thought struck him. "Psychology," he said instead. "You know, they sent this guy to psychoanalyze me before the surgery, and even though I recognized what he was doing, I was this close"--he held his fingers an inch apart--"to yelling at him to get out."

"I _did_ yell at the shrink they sent me," Teal'c admitted. "He was an idiot."

Grinning at the image, Daniel said, "My room's right up here"--a door appeared as he spoke--"so...but thanks for..."

"Sending you sprawling?" Teal'c said wryly.

"I didn't sprawl," Daniel protested, letting Teal'c support him as he settled back onto his bed. He imagined himself a little smaller and looked as perfectly helpless as he could. "Well. Uh, good luck with your thing, too."

"Thanks," Teal'c said absently, looking around the empty room. He hesitated before leaving. "Are your folks around, Daniel Jackson?"

"Not really," he said, surreptitiously watching Teal'c's face and trying to gauge which would be the best tack to take. "They're dead." He chewed on his lip, folded his arms around his chest. "Do--" he started, then stopped, peeking up at Teal'c from under his bangs and then looking away. "Never mind."

"What?" Teal'c said, tilting his head, looking at Daniel the way he'd looked at so many alien refugees he'd taken under his wing. "You sure you're okay?"

"It's stupid," Daniel muttered, then, as Teal'c tried to decide whether or not leave once and for all, he added, "Don't look at me like that."

"What? No," Teal'c protested unconvincingly. "I'm not looking like anything. Just wondering if I should call your doctor after all."

Daniel marveled at how badly Teal'c lied here--he was wearing an uncertain look on his face even now--because Teal'c had made a career of lying to some very important people: his god, his wife and son, his men. Maybe it was a side effect of being in his dream--how effectively could one really lie to a figment of one's own imagination and pretend it was true?

"You must have something better to do than babysit me," Daniel insisted.

"Not really, to be honest," Teal'c said, but he took a step toward the door.

"Thanks for walking me back," Daniel added, fishing for another opening.

"Anytime," Teal'c said.

"Really?" Daniel said hopefully. When Teal'c paused and stared at him, he added, "I mean, no, you don't...I mean. Never mind. I don't know why I said that. God, you think I'm a complete nutcase right? You should've seen me _before_ the operation. I swear I was going out of my mind."

There. That might do the job.

He took off his glasses and wiped them on a sheet, avoiding Teal'c's gaze, but he knew the man was still watching him. "Really?" Teal'c finally said.

Daniel laughed uncomfortably, pulling on one arm of his glasses--a nervous tick of his when he'd first been given the glasses on Earth, something Teal'c might recognize on some level--and said, still not looking up, "Yeah. It's dumb, right? I wasn't the one dying of kidney failure, and I kept thinking I..." He stopped. "It's stupid," he repeated in a mumble.

Teal'c seemed to make up his mind, to Daniel's relief, and stepped fully into the room. "You don't look very stupid to me, Daniel Jackson," he said.

"You can call me Daniel," he said, partly because the unconscious habit of using both names intrigued him and partly because it served as an invitation for familiarity.

For a moment, he thought he had gone too far too fast, because Teal'c tilted his head, frowning curiously. "We haven't met before, have we?"

"I don't think so," Daniel said, dutifully studying Teal'c's face as well before shaking his head. "Maybe we've passed each other on the street. I dunno."

Teal'c shrugged. "Yeah, maybe. And it's still not being stupid," he said, returning to his original point. "It was major surgery, man. Any person would've been worried."

"That's what you think," Daniel said, popping his glasses back on. "'A little worried' doesn't cover it. I barely slept for _days_ before the surgery."

"Nightmares?" Teal'c said knowingly.

Feigning surprise, Daniel nodded slowly. "Um. Yeah, actually."

"I know what that's like," Teal'c said, crossing his arms.

"Seriously? Someone like _you_ would have nightmares about this?" Daniel said.

Oops.

Teal'c gave him an odd look, because there was really no excuse for Daniel to know anything about him. Even the overly-trusting persona he'd taken on wouldn't have picked some stranger to idolize so soon. Fumbling to cover, he added, "You...you're the firefighter, right? The one who almost got blown up pulling someone out of a car? It was on the news. Uh. _Firefighter Saves Life, Narrowly Avoids Death_."

"That was me," Teal'c admitted ruefully. "And speaking of being stupid..." He trailed off, though, and shook his head. "Anyway, firefighters get nightmares just like everyone else."

"Well, I _know_ that," Daniel said quickly, pulling an embarrassed face. "I'm not an idiot. I just didn't... So you really don't think I'm weird for being...sort of screwed up right now?"

"Screwed up?" Teal'c repeated. "Nah. You wanna talk about screwed up..."

"We could trade stories," he said, as if joking, and then looked as uncertain as he could make himself look. "I'm not saying we have to. You know. I mean, you don't even know me. I just meant--"

"You know what, I don't have anything better to do while I'm waiting for my turn under the knife," Teal'c said. He pointed to a lonely chair in the room. "You mind if I sit?"

Daniel made sure to grin delightedly before wiping his face back to a badly-feigned unconcern, shrugging awkwardly against the mattress. Teal'c had a soft spot for lost alien children, and his instinct, as always, was to protect--Daniel didn't mind exploiting that if it was a way to get in and talk to his friend. "Sure, uh...go ahead," he said.

Teal'c smiled back at him, the familiar--if normally rare--wide, gentle smile, and carried the chair closer to the bedside. "You're here by yourself?" he said as he sat. "Besides your brother. Friends, family, home...?"

"No...yeah, it's just the two of us," Daniel said. Sitting a little higher on the bed, he glanced once out the door and said, as if embarrassed or telling a secret, "I had to do it. He's just a kid, and he's all I've got."

"Yeah," Teal'c said quietly, clearly understanding the sentiment. "How'd he end up needing new kidneys so young?"

"He got really sick a while back," Daniel said, looking down and twisting his sheet between his fingers. "Turned out it was some congenital problem and it finally got to be too much to handle. So." He made a face. "Here we are." He had no idea whether that made sense but suspected that Teal'c's mind didn't know enough details about medicine for it to ring false.

"It's brave of you to do this," Teal'c said seriously.

"Well, I had to, right? I mean, if I could and I didn't, it would be like I killed him myself."

"Whoa--hey, it doesn't work like that," Teal'c said, sounding alarmed and a bit uncomfortable with the turn their talk had taken. This was, admittedly, a risky tactic, but trying to advise from a position of less power was always difficult. If he could make Teal'c's subconscious focus on him as being familiar, he should have enough time to carry it out properly.

Daniel bit his lip and tried to look upset. "But that's what it felt like. You know what I'm talking about, don't you?" Teal'c looked genuinely taken aback and didn't answer. "You know. The guy you're giving your kidney to. Who is he?"

"He's my stepfather," Teal'c answered. After a moment, he added, "Sort of. He raised me after my folks died, so close enough." Daniel only nodded but stayed silent, hoping to draw out more. "I owe him everything," Teal'c added.

Daniel pulled his legs toward himself, only to stop, because--_ow_--Teal'c's imagination was drawing Daniel with frighteningly vivid accuracy as a surgical patient. "Is he _making_ you do this? Because he's not supposed to."

"Bray? No, 'course not," Teal'c said immediately. "It's just something I have to do."

"Why?" Daniel said.

"Well...because I can," Teal'c said. "He needs it."

Sighing, Daniel said, "Told you I was being stupid. It's not like I didn't want to, it was just...it..."

"No," Teal'c said firmly, leaning forward. "It's not stupid. There's nothing wrong with being scared--hey, if anyone knows how you feel, it's me, right?"

"I guess," Daniel said. "But I almost...chickened out"--he stumbled a little over a phrase he'd heard before but never used--"once or twice. What's that say about me?"

Teal'c frowned at him. "It's not written anywhere that you have to sacrifice yourself, no matter who it's for."

Ironically, the idea of sacrifice was something that Daniel had learned from Teal'c more than from anyone else; he wondered if it meant something that Teal'c was telling him now that it wasn't his obligation. Jaffa, who were taught to be disposable soldiers who fought for a cause, had always been a little more willing to sacrifice themselves than the Tau'ri, who were taught to fight hard for life and not to die willingly except as a last resort. Somehow, Daniel had never really considered the idea that Teal'c might be afraid of dying--deeply and personally afraid, not just concerned that his death would affect a war--and he wondered if it was death itself that Teal'c feared now or simply the loss of life. The Tau'ri cherished life and Teal'c had learned to be fond of the small pleasures of Tau'ri life; but Daniel knew, firsthand, that it was one thing to die and quite another to pass to another unknown world.

But that discussion could wait. They weren't anywhere near that level of trust yet.

"But you're going through with it," Daniel said. Teal'c wasn't going to stop what he was doing, of course, but that didn't mean Daniel couldn't help him reconcile his fate now, whatever that fate might be. "It's different with a little brother who's my responsibility--you...you never even considered not doing this, did you?" He shook his head. "You don't have to do it, but you're doing it anyway. They called you a hero on the news. You really are."

Teal'c didn't seem to know what to do with that. "Well...nah. It's not that big a deal."

Daniel rolled his eyes. "You can't tell me that it was a big deal for me but it's not for you. Right? Come on, man. You're not at least a little scared?"

"My job is to run into burning buildings and hope they don't explode or collapse on me," Teal'c pointed out. "I don't scare easily."

"Yeah, but you wear fireproof clothes and a mask because you don't actually _want_ to get hurt doing it," Daniel retorted. "It's different, isn't it, knowing you're asking someone to cut out a piece of you that's, at the moment, helping to keep you alive? Even if it's for the sake of healing someone else, volunteering to be injured, well..."

"It's for a friend," Teal'c said awkwardly. "I'd do anything for him."

"Then you're a good friend," Daniel said. "Bray's lucky." Oddly, he could feel a twinge of jealousy for Bray, even though he knew Bray didn't really exist and Bra'tac was dying. It had been a long time, it seemed, since Daniel had had a friend like Teal'c by his side.

"Bray needs a new kidney or he'll die," Teal'c countered.

"Yeah, which makes you a very good friend, because it's not like kidneys grow on trees," Daniel said. "Which would be...kind of disgusting, if you think too hard about it. Which I'm trying not to do right now."

Reluctantly, Teal'c grinned. His brow furrowed as he studied Daniel's face again.

"What?" Daniel said.

"Nothing," Teal'c said, staring a moment longer before shaking his head. "You remind me of my little brother, that's all. He's... He used to think way too much for his own good, too."

Daniel stilled. "Yeah?" he managed. "Uh..."

"Talked too much, too, when he was little," Teal'c added, half-teasing, half-melancholy.

"Bet he was smart, though," Daniel said impulsively, earning another smile. "So am I right? Or were you kidding before when you said firefighters get nightmares like everyone else?"

Teal'c shook his head again, looking torn between amusement and disbelief. "Yeah, all right. Maybe I am getting a little...psyched out."

The hesitancy in his expression made Daniel think of something else, though, and he started to suspect he knew why someone who had lived his life as the strongest of Jaffa warriors was suddenly imagining himself as a worried, tired, frightened human who made mistakes on the job. "Hey, you know what scared me the most?" Daniel said, lowering his voice as if to make sure no one else heard. "I kept thinking, maybe after this, even if my brother gets better...well...maybe I won't be able to take care of him anymore. I know it's just a lump of tissue and all, but it was like...things might change. Somehow. Do you know what I mean?"

"It's not just a lump of tissue," Teal'c said, but he was starting to look a little flustered. "It's...a part of you."

"Is that why you're having nightmares?" Daniel said. "You're worried about what it means if they take it from you?" Teal'c didn't answer. "Does Bray know you're worried?"

Teal'c narrowed his eyes, considering him. Daniel sat as still and looked as harmless as he could. "Honestly," Teal'c allowed, "I think everyone who knows me knows."

When it became clear he wasn't going to offer more on his own--there were disadvantages to being the younger in this situation--Daniel prompted, "What are they about? Your nightmares."

"Listen," Teal'c said, "it's not a big deal."

"No, it is," Daniel insisted earnestly. "Hey, you can tell me. I know what it's like." He forcefully pushed away Teal'c's dream's insistence on making him feel like he'd just had surgery and turned sideways on the bed, hoping it would remind Teal'c of times they'd sat across from each other on a floor and said things they wouldn't have admitted to anyone else.

"So what would _you_ say it's like?" Teal'c said.

"Well...I used to dream up really...you know, _weird_ things, yeah? Like...once, I was some sort of energy floating around and watching my...my brother, and the doctors were telling me I didn't have to do anything, but I _had_ to, except I was afraid of...I don't even know what. I thought they were going to throw me in the nuthouse."

"Maybe that's normal," Teal'c said tentatively. "The dreams."

"You think so?" Daniel said, his tone hopeful enough to draw an offered answer in return. "Bet _you_ never had dreams like that."

"Not _exactly_ like that," Teal'c conceded. Daniel raised his eyebrows, half _told-you-so_ and half dare. "All right. I keep dreaming I'm on this...this team of people. And we--" He stopped.

"What?" Daniel challenged. "Don't tell me--it sounds stupid? If you were corporeal, you've already beaten me as far as realism goes."

Teal'c laughed, without much amusement, a beat too late. "You've got a point. All right. This team--we go...places and help people."

Daniel tilted his head. "Sort of like firefighters."

"No. Not like that."

"Then what?"

Teal'c started to answer, then stopped. "I shouldn't be doing this to you," he said, and stood up.

"Wh--wait," Daniel said, wondering if he'd made a mistake somewhere. "Do what?"

"You talk like this to every stranger you bump into?" Teal'c said. "That's not a good habit, kid."

"I...felt like I could trust you," Daniel said lamely. The protective streak might have provided an opening to get Teal'c to talk, but it made him reluctant to burden a younger person, too. "It's just...no one else understands. You listened to me; the least I can do is listen back."

Teal'c was still standing, looking down at him. "I should let you rest," he finally said. "Don't worry about it."

"Right," he said. "Look, uh...I meant what I said. You're a really good friend for doing this, and I'm sure Bray realizes that. I hope _you_ realize it. Just think about it, all right?"

"Yeah, sure," Teal'c said.

"You can talk to me," Daniel called before he could go. "I wouldn't mind the company."

Teal'c still wore that look on his face, like he was _sure_ something was familiar and couldn't figure out what. "Maybe," he finally said, and smiled. "We'll trade stories."

...x...

Daniel let himself fade away with a sigh as the dream shifted back to the SGC. He watched as Teal'c suddenly dropped his weapons, looking terrified, and searched his abdomen. _My symbiote is gone_, he screamed. _My symbiote is gone_.

Outside the dream, Bra'tac had long stopped responding to anything Teal'c tried--the symbiote helped, at least as much as it could, but all three of them were dying, and, as Bra'tac had said before, his body was too old to accept a new symbiote anyway. Teal'c's sacrifice might be in vain, after all, unless SG-1 realized something was wrong and went to search for him. They would--Daniel was sure they would, without even needing a nudge from him--but a day had passed already, and if they didn't come in time...

"Hold on," Daniel said, crouching at their side and watching Teal'c's shaking hand transfer the symbiote to Bra'tac's pouch. "Okay? Teal'c?"

"Hold on," Teal'c mumbled as he settled back on the ground, his arm curled protectively around Bra'tac and his eyes darting beneath his eyelids.

"That's right," Daniel said. "They'll come and help you--you just have to hold on."

Teal'c shifted. "Help me," he whispered.

...x...

It wasn't Oma who stopped him this time; it was Martouf. "So this is what you meant by 'exceptions' to the non-interference rule," the man said. "You know that this is not an exception in the Others' eyes, don't you?"

"I told you before there were rules I wasn't planning to follow," Daniel said.

Martouf looked indecisive, then said, "Do you want me to--"

"No," Daniel said immediately. "Don't do anything. If you know what you're doing and where you're going, then...then that's good. Stay out of this, okay? I promised Sam, and maybe you don't need me looking after you, but I'm not going to get you in trouble."

"All right," Martouf said, then let him go. "Then, at least, I won't stand in your way."

"Thanks," Daniel said sincerely, and returned to Teal'c.


	9. Part III: Enlightenment, 4 of 5

**Part III (cont'd)**

The next time Daniel saw him in the dream, Teal'c was the one who sought him out. "Hey, I was visiting Bray and I thought I'd look in on you," Teal'c said from the door of Daniel's hospital room. "How're you doing?"

"Good," Daniel said. "How are you?"

"Still whole," Teal'c said. "Operation's tomorrow."

Daniel sat up straight and climbed off his bed. "Oh. Are you ready?"

"As ready as I'll ever be," Teal'c said. "Why--do you have some advice?"

The problem was, Daniel thought, that he didn't have anything useful to offer. The only way he could help Teal'c stay alive was to encourage him not to keep giving his symbiote to Bra'tac, and he couldn't do that. Teal'c would never forgive him for that. "Not specifically," he finally said, making himself smile. "Just relax. Stay calm. Everything'll be fine."

"Good to hear," Teal'c said.

"Really," Daniel said. "Don't worry."

Teal'c looked at the floor, and when he raised his hand, there was a chess set in it, though it morphed into a game of Snakes and Jackals even as he spoke. "If you're bored...?"

"Yeah," Daniel said, pulling a chair closer and rolling a table between them. "Okay. Let's play."

The game didn't follow any logical rules--or, rather, the pieces shifted about whenever Teal'c looked away or was distracted--but, interestingly, Teal'c neither won nor lost consistently. He won some and lost some, the way he had in life when he'd played with Daniel, Teal'c's wins quick and ruthless while Daniel's tended to be elaborate and clever but less realistic for a practical battle. Daniel didn't comment but rather continued playing, because Teal'c seemed to be having as much fun as could be expected in his situation.

After one of their games, though, Daniel said, "Are you afraid to die?"

The board reset itself abruptly as Teal'c looked up. "Uh," he said. "I think the risk is actually pretty small for kidney donors."

Of course. Because this was all some sort of metaphor for the situation with the symbiote, but the metaphor only extended so far. Removing a single kidney might be safe; removing the symbiote wasn't. But if Daniel couldn't help Teal'c survive this current ordeal, he could at least make sure his friend was ready for the journey after. Whether Teal'c lived or died, things would change, and he needed to be ready to face that.

"I'm not talking about this operation," Daniel said. "I mean in general. You have a dangerous job, and...well, everyone thinks about it sometimes, right?" When Teal'c hesitated, eyeing him sideways, Daniel added, "You don't have to act extra brave for my benefit. I'm not a little kid, and I'm willing to admit that I'm not eager to die. Do _you_ think about it?"

Finally, Teal'c shrugged. "Yeah, I guess. We see enough of it on the job. I'm pretty good at my job, though," he said, quirking a half-smile, though a shadow of doubt remained in his expression, "so I tend not to get hurt as much as some."

Ah. That was true. "I believe you," Daniel said, smiling back.

"It'll be a pain recovering from this enough to go back on the job."

"Yeah, I know," Daniel said, very serious. "But you can always rebuild muscle and heal tissue--that's nothing. That's not what makes you a good...firefighter."

Tilting his head, Teal'c pointed out, "It helps." He shrugged. "My team depends on me, you know? So it's not like I've never thought about dying or getting seriously hurt."

"It's an acceptable risk when you know you're doing something good, but you still don't _want_ it to happen," Daniel said. Teal'c seemed startled, though it was himself who had shown that to Daniel. "In fact, I bet the idea of this surgery is more nerve-wracking than running into burning buildings, huh?"

"A little bit," Teal'c admitted. "Maybe it's just all the waiting that gets to you. I mean, not like this operation's going to do anything horrible."

_Not exactly_, Daniel thought, forcing himself not to glance down at where Teal'c's symbiote pouch should be. "What do you think happens?" he asked. "After...you know. _After_."

_I believe there are worlds beyond ours_, Teal'c had told him once.

But now, Daniel sat frozen as the dream world shifted violently around him. He looked around, but Teal'c was still there, except this time, he was lying down and Apophis was sneering above him.

_ ["You are afraid to die," Apophis hissed. "You know you will face me in the afterlife."]_

With a jolt, the world returned to the safe, quiet room of the hospital. Teal'c didn't seem to have noticed the change, so Daniel tried to make his eyes a little less wide. "I don't really think about it," Teal'c lied badly.

"Uh-huh," Daniel said, thinking quickly about what he had just seen and what it meant. Apophis might be dead, but he still held power over them. "You want to know what I think?"

"What?" Teal'c said, humoring him but perhaps a bit curious, too.

"I think that, no matter what, there's another journey for us to take," Daniel said decisively. "You know--worlds to explore, new experiences to have. And even if it's different...I mean, obviously, it'll be different...it's not necessarily bad. You're the only one who decides what your path will be. I refuse to think that the next step on the journey--whether it's death or just a fork in the road of life--will be a passive one."

"The next step," Teal'c repeated.

The vision of Apophis flashed around them again. This time, as Teal'c stared, Daniel pulled a knife from his belt as he had years ago, he pressed it into Teal'c's hand, and they plunged it into the Goa'uld together.

As the vision faded again, leaving them both still seated before the chessboard as before, Daniel added calmly, "Of course, when I say 'you're the only one,' I mean you've still got your own will. I'm sure you have plenty of people willing to go down that road with you, like Bray and your coworkers."

"Now I _really_ hope you're not talking about death," Teal'c said, though he seemed a little more cheerful.

Daniel shrugged, examining the game before him. "I'm just talking about whatever's next. Sometimes life changes, and you change with it; you don't let it change _you_. You have your own choices, but you're not alone."

"Hey, T, we've been looking for you," Sam said, right on cue, popping her head into the doorway just as he finished speaking. "Everything okay?"

"Yeah, fine," Teal'c answered. To Daniel, he added, "Listen, I've been here for a while--I should probably go."

Nodding in encouragement, Daniel said, "Okay. Good luck with everything."

...x...

The time after that, Teal'c looked exhausted and was sitting at Bray's bedside--the 'operation' must have already happened.

"Hey," Daniel said when Teal'c walked out, wandering into the corridor. "Mr. Fireman!"

Teal'c turned around. "Daniel Jackson." He glanced back over his shoulder, then gave Daniel a smile. "You're looking better."

"They released me a few weeks back," Daniel said, deciding his character would have recovered by now according to the timeline Teal'c's mind was creating. "I was going to take a walk. You looked like you could use some company--want to join me?"

"Well...sure, okay," Teal'c said.

As they stepped outside together, Daniel asked, "So, how's Bray?"

Teal'c walked a short distance before answering and finally sat down on a bench. "Not...great," he finally said.

Daniel joined him. "I'm sorry," he said. "But if they're not giving up on him yet, maybe...you know. Still a good chance."

"Yeah," Teal'c said, though he looked far from convinced. "How about your brother?"

"He's...uh, getting better," Daniel said. "What about you--are you sleeping better, at least?"

"Yep."

"You don't look like it."

Teal'c glanced at him. "Thanks," he said.

Daniel shrugged. "Are you still having those dreams? Hey, you don't have to tell me if you don't want to," he added when Teal'c started to look stubborn. "Just if you want another opinion. Look, in a week, you'll never see me again--what can it hurt?"

"Okay, fine, Mr. Psychology Student," Teal'c said, folding his hands in his lap. "All right. I have these dreams, and I can't tell that they're not real until I wake up. And then, I wake up again from _this_, and I'm back in the dream...except..." He scratched his head, letting out a sigh.

"Except the dream seems real again," Daniel guessed, "and what you _thought_ was real seems like the dream."

Teal'c nodded. "So...interpret that one for me."

Tentatively--hoping Teal'c was tired or desperate enough by now that he wouldn't walk out this time--Daniel said, "Will you tell me what the other...well...what happens in the dream? Is it the one where you're on a team of people but you're not a firefighter?"

"Yeah, that's the one."

"I promise I won't think it's crazy," Daniel said. "Believe me--I _know_ crazy."

Shaking his head, Teal'c said, "Well, see what you think of this. I don't think I was even human. I was a..." He paused, looking embarrassed, then said, "...an alien. A Jaffa, whatever that means."

"Okay," Daniel said, trying not to give anything away. "Was everyone else an alien?"

"Nope--all human," Teal'c said. "They were my company from the fire hall, mostly--same people, different place and uniform. Even our command structure was pretty much the same--even Probie's there."

"Probie?" Daniel repeated. A moment later, he remembered having heard the word used earlier.

"Probationary fireman," Teal'c explained. "It's like calling someone a rookie." He looked up, straight at Daniel, and said, "His name's Jonas."

"Right. Uh, well, it makes sense that you'd surround yourself with your company," he reasoned. "So, um. A Jaffa, you said? What does that mean? Were you different from the others?"

Teal'c laughed a little at himself and shrugged. "I'm not sure," he admitted. "All I know is I've got this thing in my gut--I call it a symbiote in the dream. Helps keep me alive."

Daniel didn't laugh. He furrowed his brow, pretending to consider it carefully. "So it's separate from you, but it's...sort of integrated into your biology. You'd die if you lost it."

"Yeah, I think so," Teal'c said.

"Like an internal organ," Daniel suggested. "Something you'd be...understandably hesitant to give up." Teal'c raised that eyebrow at him. "Is Bray in your dream at all?"

"Which one?" Teal'c said, sighing in frustration. "I don't even know what's real anymore."

_[Teal'c,]_ Jack's voice said, distracting Daniel for a moment. _[Oh god, Teal'c, buddy, can you hear me?]_

_[Sir!]_ Sam's voice added. _[Bra'tac's alive, too--]_

_[The others are all dead,]_ Jonas said. _[This one's--and--I think all of their symbiotes are missing.]_

_[Teal'c's is gone, too,]_ Jack said grimly. _[Jonas, help Carter with Teal'c--]_

They were almost there. Daniel took a breath and said calmly, "Okay, so...when you're here, the other team, the aliens...that's the dream. And when you're there, _this_ is the dream."

"Still think I'm not crazy?" Teal'c said.

"Yes, I do," Daniel said firmly. "So you don't feel much like a Jaffa right now, do you?"

Teal'c patted his abdomen as if to check for Junior, and while that was sort of what Daniel had meant, he knew the issue went deeper than that. "Not exactly."

"Because you're missing an important part of yourself?"

"I...don't think I really like the symbiote," Teal'c said, and quickly added, "In the dream."

_[Teal'c, wake up,]_ Sam said. _[I need to know what happened to you. Wake up!]_

Daniel chewed his lip. "Whether or not you liked it," he said, "it was part of what made you what you were, yeah? Superficially, anyway. But you need to remember that it's your mind--your _kalach_--that makes you the man you are, not just your body. Whatever you do, remember that."

Too late, he realized he'd used an Abydonian word without thinking, but it was a word that had been adopted into Goa'uld and felt natural to Teal'c, too, and so his dream didn't register it as wrong. "You're making it sound like I really am an alien and this really _is_ the dream," Teal'c said, looking confused.

"Well...well, think about it," Daniel said. "Neither world seems more real than the other."

Teal'c frowned. "No, not really."

"But both of them can't be real."

"I hope not, or I'm gonna start to lose it."

"Okay," Daniel said, watching out of the corner of his eye as Sam and Jonas carried Teal'c to the Stargate, Jack hauling Bra'tac over his shoulders. "You need to figure out which one is real, right? But how about this: if both are equally real, and both _can't_ be real at the same time, then the only logical explanation would be that...well..._neither_ is real."

On some level, Teal'c must have suspected already that something was wrong, because he didn't scoff or call Daniel insane. "What?" he said.

"No, think about it," Daniel said. "Maybe...you don't belong in either one. Maybe they're _both_ dreams. You haven't woken up at all."

"Then what am I supposed to do?" Teal'c said.

_[Med team!]_ Sam yelled, lowering Teal'c to the ramp as gently as she could. _[Colonel O'Neill's coming through with Bra'tac. Janet!]_

Daniel stood, listening for the sound of heels that would mean Janet was running into the embarkation room. "You have to hold on," he said aloud, already beginning to move away, watching the bustle of the 'gate room. "Just a little while longer."

"Wait, Daniel Jackson," Teal'c said, standing too. "What are you talking about? You can't just leave like that!"

"I haven't left your side, Teal'c," Daniel said, focusing back on the face in this dream. Chief O'Neill was striding rapidly toward them. "And I'm not going to. That's a promise." O'Neill grasped Teal'c by the shoulder, and--

...x...

"--listen to me, okay," Janet said, crouching on the ramp. She was holding Teal'c's head between her hands, forcing him to look at her as Jack held his shoulders, restraining and supporting all at once. "This is very important. How long have you gone without your symbiote?"

"Bra'tac," Teal'c gasped, his eyes wild.

"It's okay," Janet said evenly. "He's alive, thanks to you, but I need to know how long--"

"You must save Bra'tac!" Teal'c insisted, bucking weakly against Jack's hold.

"We'll do our best, okay?" she said, standing and moving out of the way. Raising her voice, she added, "Let's take them both directly to OR One. Let's move!"

_Daniel_, Oma said. _You've done all you can._

He stayed, following Teal'c with his eyes until both gurneys were out of sight, then reluctantly slipped away to watch from a distance.

...x...

"Did I make a difference?" Daniel said when Oma met him. "I'm not sure I did anything at all."

Oma was watching alongside him as Janet continued transferring Teal'c's symbiote from him to Bra'tac and the others quietly discussed which one of them should live, should it come to a choice. "Your time at the SGC," Oma said, "taught you to measure success by the far-reaching consequences of your actions. But even then, your team taught you that sometimes the only possible success is the survival of those few around you."

"They could both still die," Daniel said.

"You gave him a friend when he was frightened," she said. "Someone who would understand and care. You gave him hope for the rest of his journey in whatever form it may take."

"That's not enough," he said. "Not even close."

"It never is," she agreed. "In time, you will learn to resent it less and appreciate small deeds of comfort more."

Daniel didn't answer. He didn't think he ever would learn to resent it less, and he was terrified that she might be right--that one day, he might be willing to look away from suffering and be content with occasional good deeds.

"You did a good thing, Daniel," Oma said, her attention turned away from Earth and to him. Her tone was as much warning as it was reassuring. "Don't throw that away trying to do more than you can or should."

"Right," Daniel said. "Sure."

...x...

Daniel was waiting when Teal'c and Bra'tac were both stable and was selfishly a bit glad that the rest of SG-1 had retired for the night by the time Teal'c opened his eyes, coherent for the first time. He wanted a chance to talk to his friend--as a friend, not as a figment of a dream--and he was breaking rules just to do that without having an audience, too. "Hi, Teal'c," he said.

Teal'c turned his head slowly toward him in the empty infirmary. "Am I dreaming?" he said.

"Not this time," Daniel said. "Everyone's gone home, but I just wanted to check on you before I go, too." Teal'c's fingers wandered toward his symbiote pouch, and Daniel added, "Don't--don't touch it; Dr. Warner stitched you up. Junior's gone, but they've started you on something new, something that'll let you live without depending on a Goa'uld ever again."

"Tretonin," Teal'c said, narrowing his eyes as if trying to remember.

Nodding, Daniel said, "Yes, tretonin. The Tok'ra have given us--given the SGC enough doses of the drug to go on."

"Bra'tac?"

"Both you and Bra'tac are going to live, Teal'c, thanks to you."

"And to you, my friend," Teal'c said, searching his face closely.

Daniel shook his head. "I didn't do anything," he said. "That was you. You gave up your symbiote, knowing every time it could be your last, over and over for three days... No one else could have done it. No one else _would_ have. I meant what I said, Teal'c--you're a good friend, and stronger than even I knew."

Teal'c settled back against his pillow. "This experience has been very different for me," he said.

"It was only what your mind needed to get through your ordeal. And it's not all going to be easy from here, but you need to remember the important things--you're alive, Bra'tac's alive, and this may seem like a different journey, but it's not a worse one. All of this is real now, and you need to get some sleep."

"Sleep," Teal'c echoed slowly, and Daniel wondered if he had slept at all since he had received his first _prim'ta_ as a young boy, nearly a century ago.

"Close your eyes," he instructed softly. "Relax. Remember? Like you taught me. Just close your eyes and try to stop thinking too much. When you wake up, things will be better."

"Is that a promise, Daniel Jackson?" Teal'c said.

Daniel smiled, swallowing a lump, knowing this was goodbye again. It didn't seem fair that he had to say goodbye so many times. "That's a promise," he said.

XXXXX

Oma left him alone while Teal'c and Bra'tac were healing. Daniel sequestered himself in his library and very pointedly did nothing but read about things that had _nothing_ to do with the people he cared about most.

Ganos Lal's latest book didn't seem like anything new. Knowing these weren't actual, printed books but rather bundles of knowledge, he still flipped through it, in case he found something interesting. And then--

_"The Others are always watching,"_ one page said.

He looked up and found that there was, indeed, someone who looked like an old woman sitting silently in the corner, reading, not looking at him but undoubtedly aware of him. Trying to look casual, Daniel bent back over the book and continued reading:

_Forgive how long this took_. _I needed an excuse that the Others would not find suspicious._

_We spoke briefly of the Sangreal. I tell you now that it was so important that Moros was willing to Descend and retake human form for it. It was a weapon, but one that could be vital to the future of all life, and, indeed, the future of all Ascended beings. At the time, I believed him misguided and dangerous. While I still question his methods, I see now that his goal was right, and that lowers may not be able to complete this task without our aid. I ask you now to join me._

_However, we cannot act if the Others suspect us. You must begin to gain their confidence. This may take a long time, but you should now be aware that time is very different on this plane. The Others will eventually tire of watching you and allow you access to all the knowledge and powers of an Ascended being, but this will not happen if you continue your small interferences among lowers. Whether or not you accept my proposal, I advise you to accept this counsel, for you will otherwise never be free of their suspicion._

_If we are to succeed in finding the Sangreal, it will not be soon or without well-formed plans. I ask nothing now but discretion, even from Oma Desala. If she believes our efforts will interfere with her own, she may betray us to the Others. I have found you to be worthy of trust--I ask not for the same trust in return, but only for our continued discussions. Larger goal or no, I find myself enjoying our debates._

_I look forward to our next meeting._

_--Ganos Lal, once called Morgan le Fay_

Daniel took a deep breath. Then he took another. He skimmed over the note once more, then turned the page and pretended to continue reading as his mind whirled.

This was what was confusing Oma, Daniel realized. She had said that Ganos Lal deceived people, and perhaps it was true, but it only meant that she was more subtle in her workings--she supported something the Others did not, but she was better at toeing the line. Oma was more honest and forthright, and everyone knew her virtues as well as her faults. Who was to say, after all, that Ganos Lal wasn't as right--or more so--than Oma?

On the other hand...

Daniel suspected he was the only one who hadn't realized that Ganos Lal and Morgan le Fay were one and the same, even with all the pieces laid out for him. She had never told an explicit lie--she had never claimed outright not to be Morgan, and when she had said that Merlin hadn't been Ascended _at the time_, he had assumed the same of Morgan. That meant, though, that he would always have to wonder if he was missing something--he couldn't even be sure now if she was misleading him somehow. For all he knew, she might be doing this on the Others' orders and lying when she said otherwise.

Still, if Oma had known who Ganos Lal was and had let Daniel fish blindly for clues about Morgan le Fay anyway, then Oma was hiding things from him, too. He wasn't sure if that was because she was too afraid of what the Others would do if she told him too much or simply because she didn't want him to know.

He couldn't trust anyone, he realized with a chill, because no one here trusted him.

All of a sudden, Daniel missed his team very much.

The Other in the corner was still there, so he pushed the sentiment aside and reached for another book to read. In the absence of anything resembling a team, he needed a plan, and to formulate a plan, he needed to understand whatever he could. Oma wanted him to be more passive. Ganos Lal wanted the opposite, but even she didn't want him to do anything now. Whether or not he trusted her, he wouldn't have to act on it yet, and her advice not to antagonize the Others any further was good advice that everyone wanted him to follow. If he wanted to carve his own path, he needed to avoid any more scrutiny than he'd already attracted.

XXXXX

And yet...

Daniel followed Bra'tac when he left after starting on tretonin. He seemed fine--he seemed as strong as ever, and Rya'c certainly didn't find any new weaknesses in his teacher. They successfully led a group of recruits from their home to a rebel camp, and everything seemed to be progressing as usual.

Until they were caught.

Daniel stood and watched until he couldn't bear anymore to stand idly by while Rya'c was beaten or Bra'tac whipped on Rya'c's behalf while Rya'c screamed, _Tek'ma'tae, no! Master!_

He sighed and turned to leave...

Bra'tac shouted, and a rush of rebels--himself, Rya'c, three more Daniel didn't recognize--attacked the Jaffa guarding the Stargate. In the brief chaos that broke out, Bra'tac ripped a device from the forearm of one of the guards and lunged for the DHD. Daniel watched closely as he dialed--_Eridanus, Centaurus, Cancer, Libra, Triangulum, Sculptor_--

The Alpha Site. Of course--Bra'tac didn't have a GDO and knew better than to try to SGC without one.

Using the stolen device, Bra'tac sent a code through the wormhole just before he was recaptured along with the others who had helped him.

Daniel watched them struggle in vain--it was wrong, he thought, that he could watch slaves fight for their lives while he had the power to change it all and still could do nothing.

"Ooh--so close," a voice said from behind him, and he turned to see Jim shaking his head as he peeked into the scene. "Shame. Ba'al's really got 'em locked down tight on that world."

"Yeah," Daniel agreed, and thought about what Jim had said before about tipping points. Sometimes--like now, when he watched Teal'c's son begin to collapse from exhaustion--he thought he was balancing at a tipping point already. He wondered what would happen if he ever found an excuse to jump off the other side and welcomed the feeling of freedom that the thought gave him.

"Ah, well," Jim said, and turned to leave.

_One day_, Daniel thought, and returned to his room, too.

XXXXX

The news these days was all about Anubis. Daniel knew just about all there was to know about the mythological side of Anubis, but as for the Goa'uld himself...

"Anubis again?" Oma said. "Or are you back to Morgan le Fay?"

Daniel resisted the urge to tell her he knew who Morgan was, thank you very much, and instead turned a page. "Anubis," he said. "He's found the Eye of Apophis. I've found all the information I can on the Eyes' general properties, but Anubis himself is still like a blank to me. I can't learn anything about him at all."

She sighed. "Is this a phase, or am I going to spend the rest of eternity watching you flit from one obsession to another?"

"I'm dead because of Anubis," Daniel said. "I'm justifiably curious."

"You're not dead," she said.

"I might as well be, for all the good it's doing," he said.

Oma sat down at the table across from him. "You need to be patient," she said again. "It _will_ seem better in time."

Daniel angrily flipped the book shut. "How long did it take _you_ to stop caring whether your friends were hurt? Or did you just wait until they died and freed you of that burden?"

She didn't answer.

Without waiting for her to speak, Daniel slipped into the world Seth had used as one of his bases before fleeing to Earth. The information Jim had given him mentioned the Eyes of Osiris and Seth--Osiris herself might have led Anubis to one of them, but if he had found the Eye of Seth, he must have had some record or research to go on.

"It was your choice to do what you did on Revanna," Oma said, still following him when he finally found something.

"If it hadn't been for Anubis, I wouldn't have had to make that choice," Daniel said as he searched. "And dozens--maybe hundreds--of Tok'ra would still be alive now, not to mention that the other System Lords would be dead."

"Is this revenge, then?"

Daniel turned to look at her. "My people are in danger, and I can't believe I'm standing by, doing research for my own _curiosity_."

Oma tilted her head. "Curiosity has always been a good enough reason for you."

Which was why he'd been on a team for his abilities, but not as a commander or second-in-command or strategic advisor. Now, though, he didn't have the luxury of being curious for curiosity's sake until Jack or Sam or Teal'c called, '_Enough!_' He was on his own now.

"It's not enough when my friends could die," he said. "There are priorities. Sometimes defensive and offensive reasons have to come before academic curiosity, and now, I can't do anything about it."

"Your friend Martouf has been here less time than you, and already he is adjusting to--"

"Then maybe you should've Ascended him instead of me in the first place."

"You know that's not what I mean," Oma said.

Daniel shook his head. "Doesn't mean it's not true."

"You were trained," she said carefully, taking a step toward him, "to believe that you had a duty--an _obligation_ to fight while most others would stand aside. What was it you told Teal'c in his dream? That he didn't have to do what he did for Bra'tac at the risk of his own life?"

"But he did it anyway," he said. "Because he had to. _I_ have to. I can't sit here and do nothing when I know what's at stake for them."

"Every person has a right simply to be," she said. "You and your team fought hard to give other people that chance, and you have paid dearly for it. You've earned the right to stop fighting--to leave that to someone else who has not already given his life for others."

"What kind of person would that make me?" he said.

Oma sighed. "Just a person, Daniel," she said. "That's all. There are people like you in every society. The Jaffa have warriors. The Alterans--the Ancients--had fleets with armies. On Abydos, you called them _watalu_--the village Guards."

"That makes no sense; I was never one of the Guards or a...a Jaffa warrio--"

"In your country on Earth," she went on, "they are called soldiers." He shook his head, but she was already continuing, "And...airmen, marines, firefighters...ones who run _into_ fire when others run away. We are born with the instinct for survival--it takes hard training to learn to put that aside, and not everyone can. That is nature, not cowardice. You weren't always one of those warriors, Daniel. You've done your part--it's time to let that go."

"You said '_we_ are born,'" he countered. "You and the Others can distance yourselves from the...the _lowers_ as much as you want, but _we_ were _them_ once, and you know it. We can't just turn a blind eye. Maybe I wasn't always one of...of the front line, Oma, but I'm not a child anymore, and I refuse to stand aside like one."

Oma shook her head, reaching up to his shoulder to smooth the nonexistent cloth of his imaginary clothing, and he glanced down to see that he was wearing his old SG-1 uniform now. "Growing up does not have to mean putting yourself aside for others," she said, squeezing his arm gently. "The way you've lived, I wonder if you truly understand the difference."

"I don't know anything else," he said, wondering if she had taken this last mannerism from his memories of his mother or if it was simply how she always acted around her children. "What do you want from me?"

"I only want you to reach your potential," Oma said. "And I want you to trust me on this: this fight with Anubis is not your battle. It's not for you to fight, and it's not one you can win."

_But I have to fight it_, he almost said, and _You shouldn't have picked me._

Whether it was Morgan's warning, though, or something else, he stayed quiet. Better if no one suspected him of anything. Speaking up was all well and good, but sometimes, maybe he had to start thinking the way Jack would have, like he was facing the prospect of a campaign that could take either minutes or years to finish. He needed information, now, and a plan.

"Why is Anubis different?" he asked instead of answering her directly. "How can that possibly be something I shouldn't know about?"

"Because it's not your business," she said, sounding tired. "It's mine."

To disguise his curiosity at that answer, Daniel turned back to studying what little he'd found to the Eye of Seth. "What about the six Eyes?" he said. "What's he doing with them?"

"For now?" she said. "Collecting them. After that? You know we can't tell the future."

"But we can make a good guess," Daniel said. "They're weapons of some sort. Right?"

"Each of them is, yes," Oma said, "and all of them together would make a weapon many times as strong as the sum of its parts, as I'm sure you know from your own recent research."

Daniel thought that over. Sam and Martouf had examined the Eye of Tiamat back when they'd first found it, but they hadn't understood it. Daniel could see how the devices worked now, though, because it was, after all, only a mildly complex network of matter that directed energy in certain ways. If anyone alive knew how to do it, then Anubis--as old as he was, as powerful as he had grown--would know. Perhaps other Goa'uld knew, too. Some were old enough that they had surely seen the Eyes used before they had all been lost.

"So..." Daniel said, "I know there's an Eye of Osiris, Seth, Apophis, Tiamat. Probably Ra, given how important that symbol was to him. If there are six, there's still one more I don't know about..." He looked up at her hopefully.

"I won't help you go down this path, Daniel," she said.

He had to find someone who would help him, then. Shifu wouldn't if she wouldn't--if Oma thought Daniel had been indoctrinated by the SGC, certainly Shifu had been by her. Ganos Lal might wish for good, but she was too frightened of the Others' attention and too willing to accept collateral damage, if there was any truth to the stories of her and Merlin.

But there was one who had seemed willing to help him...

"Maybe I'll just ask Jim," he said.

"Don't," Oma snapped, and actually reached out to grab his arm. "Daniel! Whatever you do, do _not_ tell him _anything_ you know about the Eyes. I know you think I'm being...unreasonable or paranoid, but sometimes you have to _trust me_."

Daniel backed away from her--she had no power here, away from Kheb--and freed himself from her grasp. "I'd like to," he said. "Tell me what you have against him--tell me _anything_ without all the evasions, or I'll go and ask him myself."

"He's...not a good person," she said. "Why do you think he was talking to you and just happened to bring up the Eyes? He wants them for something terrible."

"If he's so terrible, how did he even Ascend?" Daniel said, and then remembered, "He called you 'Mother.'"

She looked down.

"You helped him Ascend," he said.

"Yes, he's one of mine," she said. "He found me at Kheb--fooled me deliberately. He is the _reason_ I was exiled."

"No--I thought you were exiled because you helped people in general Ascend--"

"You helped Martouf," she said impatiently, "and even with the Others' suspicions on you, you remain, more or less, free. It was a very special case that brought their wrath on me."

"But...he can't do anything," Daniel said. "The Others would..." He trailed off, thinking of what else Jim had said to him that one time they'd met. "This is...that's why the Others don't like people like me. Is this...was he..."

"You are not like him," she said sharply. "However much you disobey the Others, you would never be as corrupt as he."

"But how is he corrupt?" he asked, teetering between skepticism and a sense of dawning horror. "And did he start out that way? I mean...maybe he...he doesn't like the Others, Oma. I agreed with everything he said--he--maybe it's just a matter of...of...methods, and--"

"He lied to me," she said again. "He reached Ascension by lying to the one person who might be foolish enough to believe him. He knew exactly what he was doing."

"But Jim told me about Anubis," Daniel said. "He told me about the Eyes. Why would he--"

"He _asked_ you about the Eyes," Oma said. "Remember? He charmed you just like he charmed me. He told you what you wanted to hear and even gave you some harmless information to seem helpful. And then he asked you about the Eyes--what you knew, whether the SGC had them..."

"But I didn't know anything about the Eyes," he said, not wanting to believe her because it made everything more complicated. "Except--"

"Don't," she interrupted. "Whatever it is, I don't want to know it. Anubis has already shown interest in you several times--or, at least, interest in taunting you--and if he's listening..."

"Anubis hasn't shown interest in...me..." Daniel started, but Oma lowered her eyes again, and _again_, Daniel felt the pieces click into place far too late. "Jim? He's...Anubis is...I had a conversation with Anubis?" And then, "You Ascended _Anubis_!"

"I have tried to undo the mistake," she insisted. "But mistakes like Anubis are why the Others disapprove of what I do."

"I'm not like him," Daniel said, even as he thought that he was, a little. Anubis had been playing him for a fool--calling himself Jim, using Jack's words and Tau'ri turns of speech, commiserating about Anubis...but some of it had to have been true. What did it mean that Daniel had so heartily agreed and still did now, even knowing what he knew?

"No," she said quickly. "You're not. You have qualities that cause the Others to see you the same way, which is why you have to be that much more careful. But you are nothing like him."

"Qualities," he repeated hollowly.

"You're both...keen to have power in your hands," she said. "Not for the same reasons, I know--"

"I don't want power," Daniel protested.

"You Ascended because you thought you could _do_ more this way," Oma said, "not because you thought you could _be_ more."

"But how can that be wrong?" he said.

"I didn't say it was," she said. "You know my beliefs. But it scares the Others. If you were someone else, it might scare me, too. Sometimes, it still does."

"I wouldn't do something terrible," Daniel said. "Not like Anubis."

"I don't think you...would try to do anything wrong," she agreed, and despite her soft tone, he could hear the careful phrasing of her words. "But Anubis certainly has and would."

"And that's why you spend so much time watching me," he said.

"Everyone needs a guide in the beginning," she said tactfully.

"Was Anubis like me at first?"

"No," she said. "You seek power because you wish to do good. He sought power because he wished to rule. But my punishment is to have no power to stop what he's doing."

"The Others will--"

"No, Daniel," she said, shaking her head. "They won't. They sent him back, but only partially. A mistake made by an Ascended being with a mortal... _I_ made the mistake. If they fixed it, it would only encourage what I do."

"They'd let the whole galaxy suffer for your mistake," Daniel said, not sure why he was still surprised. "To punish you?"

"Don't forget how small that galaxy is to them," she said. "Billions may suffer to punish me, but seeing what I caused might stop me and others like me from committing--or facilitating--hundreds of trillions of more crimes."

Daniel exhaled slowly, staring at his feet. "You don't think they could've stopped Anubis when they realized it hasn't worked as a deterrent for you?"

"But it has," she said quietly. "I've been careful. I haven't stopped my work because it wouldn't stop the mistake I already made, but I haven't made a mistake like that since Anubis. Many, many more people would have Ascended with my help if I hadn't realized I had to be more careful, and I might have done something...even worse."

Despite everything she had done for him, a sense of horror kept trying to creep in when he looked at her. "You Ascended Anubis," he said again.

"And people have died for my mistake," Oma said. "I know--believe me, I _know_. All I can do--"

"There has to be something," he said. "I don't believe there's simply no way."

"You don't think I've tried?" she said.

"I don't think you've tried enough," he retorted.

She didn't answer.

"It's not fair," he said, feeling betrayed, though he couldn't have said who he thought had betrayed him. He'd tried so very hard to convince himself that he was taking the wiser path by standing aside, no matter what atrocities he could see on the lower planes. He didn't have the right to step in when mortals had problems, and he might have trouble adhering to that philosophy, but he wasn't essentially opposed to it.

But _Anubis_.

Anubis wasn't of the lower planes anymore; he was a product of Ascension and mistakes made by Ascended beings, perpetrating crimes on mortals who had little or no way to stop him. How could that possibly be fair? How could it be _right_?

Maybe this was Daniel's tipping point. Maybe that had been Jim's--Anubis's--plan all along, to make him step out of line and remove himself from the collective of Others who could potentially influence him, but he didn't care anymore--Anubis might have said it first, but it was still true. Maybe Ascension _wasn't_ Daniel's path, and it was time to make that decision.

Oma sighed, looking dejected. "Do you understand now why I try so hard to stop you from defying them?"

_Yes_, Daniel thought, and, _Not good enough._ "He's looking for the Eyes," he said. "He's trying to build a weapon. You've been watching him too, yes?"

"Yes. He's only missing two: the Eye of Ra and the Eye of Tiamat."

"Wh--wait a minute," Daniel said, frowning. "I thought he'd only found the Eyes of Osiris, Seth, and Apophis."

"The other is the Eye of Anubis," she said, looking resigned. "He didn't need help to find that one. You've asked me why you can't see Anubis like you can see everyone else--he might be only partially Ascended, but he is so much more experienced than you. You've balked at learning the rules, but he didn't--he learned how to use them for his ends. Please. If you listen to nothing else I say, _please_ leave him alone, for your own sake."

There were two Eyes left. One was on Earth--probably gathering dust on a shelf by now, since no one knew how it worked. The other, the Eye of Ra...there was only one place it could be. Daniel and Skaara hadn't found it before, even with the help of Robert and SG-11, but they hadn't known what they were looking for. Now...

Abydos had been the center of Ra's domain. Anubis would know that, too. Daniel couldn't let that happen, not when he knew what Anubis was and when they had tried so hard to keep Abydos a safe haven in the galaxy.

If he did anything, no one would turn a blind eye. Even Oma wouldn't shield him. Ganos Lal might be planning something--something huge, if she was telling the truth--but if he did this, he would never gain enough trust among the Others to be able to help her. Maybe they would kill him for it, or whatever the equivalent was for someone already Ascended. Whatever happened to him this time...

But what was the point of living--of _existing_--if he didn't do this? There was no choice, really, not when it was his home, his family, his people at stake.

"Okay," Daniel said calmly, as if he weren't contemplating which plan of action would let him survive the longest before the Others stepped in to punish him. "I'm going to do some more research. I want to know more about how all of this happened. I'll be wandering around, all right? Maybe look through my library again."

Oma looked at him suspiciously. "You'll do nothing?" she said.

"I understand the consequences," he said solemnly. "You know I wouldn't risk my friends."

"All right," she said. Daniel tried not to look like he was hurrying as he slipped away.

...x...

He went to his library first. He'd already learned as much as he could about the Eyes, so instead, he pulled out Ganos Lal's--Morgan's--book and flipped several pages past the note she'd left him.

_I'm not your scapegoat with the Others_, he wrote in the margin, _and I have my own path to follow. Whatever you're planning, do it yourself._

He'd just finished when Oma stopped by. "What, you didn't think I'd be here?" he said, flipping surreptitiously back to the page with Morgan's note, hiding his own words from view.

"I thought you acquiesced too easily," she admitted. "I'm glad to be wrong."

With a silent apology, Daniel turned Morgan's book around to face her and said, "Oma, I found this note in a book Ganos Lal gave me--I guess you were right in thinking she was trying to manipulate me." She looked at him sharply and took it from him, skimming quickly. "Don't tell on her," he said, trying to look earnest while nearly squirming with impatience. "Maybe she can do some good. I just...thought you should know."

Oma scowled and took the book. "I won't say anything to the Others," she said, "but she shouldn't have put you in this position. I need to speak with her." She gave him a small smile. "Thank you, Daniel. I'm glad you brought this to me."

"Of course," Daniel said, willing her to go away. He tried not to think too hard about what she'd just told him: that Anubis had lied to her, too, because she was the only one who cared enough to believe it. "It seems you're the only one I can trust here."

Her smile brightened, gentle, honest, and genuine. However cynical she sometimes seemed, she hadn't truly learned the lesson the Others' punishment should have taught her; she could still believe so strongly in her latest child's goodness that she could be fooled by him.

Daniel smiled back at her and carefully pushed the thought aside as she left. The end didn't always justify the means, but sometimes it did, and if Daniel had learned anything in his time here, it was that he _could not _sit by like this any longer when the Others were letting one of their own slaughter mortals. Oma would disapprove. He only hoped she would understand afterward.

...x...

"Martouf," Daniel said when he found his friend. "I need your help."

Martouf studied him with a look of vague consternation but said, "What is it?"

"Nothing big," Daniel promised. "I'm about to do...something. Oma's busy for now, but when she's done with that, if you can do it without drawing suspicion, ask her a question or...or whatever. I just need a little time without her watching me. If anyone starts looking at you, then...then back off. Don't put yourself in harm's way."

"Daniel," Martouf said quietly, "what are you doing?"

"Try to buy me a little time," he said without answering, "but don't draw attention to yourself."

"You can't tell me something like that and expect me to stand aside," Martouf said.

"Look, I can't do this," he said. "Maybe you can do good up here among the Others, but my fight is down on the lower planes. I'll feel better knowing that someone as good as you is up here."

Martouf looked torn. "All right," he said. "I'll find Oma for you, but--"

"Do me a favor, okay?" Daniel interrupted. "If you want to help, there's an Ancient here named Ganos Lal--her name on Tau'ri is Morgan le Fay. See if you can figure out what her endgame is and if it's something worth your help. If not, then leave it--turn around and keep going on your own path." Martouf started to say something. "I have to go," Daniel said quickly and rushed away to set his plans into motion.


	10. Part III: Enlightenment, 5 of 5

**Part III (cont'd)**

Daniel had never gotten lost on Abydos. Now, especially, with his mind clear with intent, it was simple to find Kasuf's dwelling, but Kasuf wasn't there; Sha'uri was.

"Sha'uri," Daniel said.

She jumped and whirled around. "Dan'yel?" she breathed. She looked around himself, as if expecting some trick. "What--is it you?"

"It is," Daniel said. "I am as Shifu was when you last saw him." Her eyes widened in understanding, and he added, "Your son is well, Sha'uri."

"Good," she said, a little faintly. "Then..."

"Where is Kasuf?"

Sha'uri swallowed, looking out the doorway as if to see if anyone else was around, then said, "My father is old. He has been ill in recent days. He is resting now."

_Oh_. Daniel hadn't expected that, for some reason, even knowing that Kasuf was middle-aged by Tau'ri standards but a very old man by Abydonian ones. Janet and a medical team, had helped to improve sanitation and some basic practices here, but modest improvements could only do so much. People who worried about having enough food to feed the village for a whole year didn't think too hard about what foods were more nutritious and what work was less dangerous.

Keeping his face carefully clear, Daniel said, "Then you govern here now? In practice, at least?" Sha'uri nodded once. "I need you to call the full council. Abydos is in danger."

"What are you saying?"

"Anubis, Sha'uri," Daniel said, watching her stiffen. "You know of him?"

"All Goa'uld knew of him," she said softly.

"Then you know there is little time."

She took a breath and nodded. "I will gather the elders."

"Bring Skaara," Daniel said.

She stared at him for a moment, knowing that there was only one reason he would want Skaara at a council meeting. "We cannot defeat a Goa'uld like Anubis with weapons, brother. Even the Tau'ri could not do it."

"Trust me," he said, and wasn't sure whether or not he was lying as he continued, "I would not lead Abydos to its destruction. Send messengers, call the council, and bring Skaara with you. I will return and explain when everyone is together."

...x...

There was a space behind Sam's lab for storage. Daniel moved immediately to the depleted devices that had been found in the secret chamber of Ra's pyramid on Abydos. He didn't think the Eye of Ra was in here--surely a jewel with a _wedjat_ on it would have been noteworthy--but everyone had been very preoccupied with Jack's disappearance on Edora at the time. It wouldn't hurt to take another look, and he also needed to find the Eye of Tiamat.

He'd moved on to the storage area near the archaeology office when--

_[Dan'yel,]_ Sha'uri said. _[What is it you have to tell us?]_

_[Dan'yel?]_ Kasuf added; he was sitting with the elders, too. _[Are you there?]_

He checked the shelves behind him one more time, and then left.

...x...

"...said that Abydos was in danger," Sha'uri was saying when Daniel stepped into a dark corner of the hastily-erected tent, set in unclaimed territory between Nagada and the next largest town.

"How can you be sure you saw true?" said Itet of Kalima. "You told us yourself that Dan'yel of Tau'ri was no longer in our world."

"If my daughter says she saw Dan'yel," Kasuf spoke up, "then she did."

"Then where is he?" Skaara said.

Daniel stepped out and pulled back his hood. "I am here," he said. All eyes fixed on him. Skaara made a movement as if to get up, but Daniel continued before he could. "There is not much time--listen carefully. The Goa'uld Anubis has become the most powerful of the false gods. He is seeking a device that will make him too powerful for any to defeat."

"Why would he attack Abydos?" Kasuf said. "We have nothing he wants."

"You do," Daniel said. "The device he seeks is here, left somewhere on our land by Ra. He will come soon, and when he does, he will crush any who stands in his path until he finds it. You must stop him."

"We?" Skaara said. "I have heard of Anubis. We cannot win against him."

"We cannot let _him_ win," Daniel countered. The faces around him looked uncertain--few of them were fighters, much less knew what it meant to face a Goa'uld like Anubis--and he added, "I believe in Abydos. We are a strong people, and we _can_ stop Anubis from taking the Eye of Ra."

Skaara sat straighter. "The Eye of Ra? Then, could it be...our chamber--"

"Yes," Daniel said, nodding once. "It must be there, and you must find it. O'Neill and his team will help you, but I need you to show them the way. When Anubis comes..."

"We will fight," another man said, raising his chin. Daniel didn't know his name, but he was the chieftain of one of the tribes that never settled--they knew hardship, but they were known for their pride, as well. "We will die before we surrender to another false god."

Itet nodded. "Our lives are meaningless if we do not stop him from finding what he seeks. There is more to think of than only ourselves."

Skaara was trying to catch Daniel's eye. Unwilling to let anyone else distract him, Daniel watched Kasuf, knowing that this decision lay ultimately with him, not Skaara or even Sha'uri. Finally, Kasuf said, "We will take the women and children to the caves of Kalima. Skaara, you must return to Nagada and gather all those capable of fighting."

_All those willing to die,_ Daniel thought, but Skaara was looking at him with such faith that he couldn't bring himself to say it. He summoned a small smile and nodded once, pained by the determined smile Skaara gave him in return. He thought about how many people he was betraying in this last effort and wondered if this was how Jack had felt every time Daniel had accused him of not thinking of the collateral damage and the morality of their actions.

"Go," Daniel ordered. "It is a long journey to Kalima, and there is no time to waste."

...x...

He returned to the archaeology archives to look for the Eye of Tiamat, and his frustration was just beginning to mount when something caught his eye.

A tablet lay on the shelf--'Ra's Ancient tablet,' he'd always called it before. He'd struggled with the translation before putting it aside. Now, though, what it said was clear. The tablet was written by the Ancients, and it told the story of their Ascension.

The Others--or, at least, the first of them--were _Ancients_.

He'd gotten so close to the answer so many times--he'd even found out that Morgan le Fay, an Ancient, was also now an Ascended being. He'd known there was a connection he had been missing, and it even explained why some of Anubis's technology looked like some kind of Goa'uld-Ancient hybrid. If the Others wanted to hide something about Ascended beings they disapproved of--Anubis, perhaps, or even some larger, darker faction--it might explain why they had refused to let him learn about the Ancients, the first people to have Ascended.

If only he had put the pieces together sooner...

Before he could finish reading, a light flickered on overhead. Daniel turned around and found himself face to face with Jonas Quinn of Kelowna.

"Um...hi," Jonas said. It wasn't until his eyes flicked briefly down and back up that Daniel realized he still appeared dressed as if for the desert. "How did you get in here? Who are you?"

"I'm an Ancient," Daniel blurted, still thinking about the tablet.

"Sure you are," Jonas said, clearly not believing him. "Let's try that again. Who are you and what are you doing?"

"No, uh...no, sorry," Daniel said, wishing that he'd been faster or that someone else had been the first to see him here. "Jonas Quinn, I'm Daniel Jackson." He started to extend his hand in greeting, then thought better of it.

Well. This wasn't the time for pleasantries, anyway.

"You're...wait a minute," Jonas said, his eyes suddenly widening. "Then...but you're--"

"Call Jack," Daniel said, recovering and returning to the matter at hand. "Or Sam or Teal'c. No one else."

"Okay," Jonas said warily, backing up two steps. "Uh...I'll, uh...I'll just--"

"Don't touch that," Daniel said, not wanting to waste time, and Jonas slowly pulled his hand away from the alarm near the door. "And don't raise your voice. Phone. Call your team. _Only_ them."

"Okay," Jonas said again, and, without looking away from Daniel, moved to the closest phone, dialed, and said, "Sam, good, you're there. You...um, you need to come here. The--it's--you really need to see this for yourself.... No--no, right _now_.... Yeah.... Them, too. Right. Uh, thanks." He hung up the phone.

"You believed me?" Daniel said, a little impressed.

"Sam has a picture of you," Jonas explained. "I've seen you before. Sort of. And there was that thing with Martouf, so whatever doubts I had... Also, there's no projector around, so you're not a hologram, and your foot is sticking into the wall."

Daniel extracted his foot. "Right." As they waited, he asked, "Do you know what the _wedjat_ symbol is?"

"Ye-es," Jonas said, his tone making it sound like a question.

"Draw it."

"What?"

"Draw the eye of Ra," he repeated. "For reference. It'll save me from having to describe it to the others."

"Right," Jonas said, and slowly found a legal pad. "Uh...so, listen. Aren't you dead?"

"No," Daniel said, and turned back to the artifacts.

"Oh," Jonas said.

A hand went through Daniel's arm. "Don't do that," Daniel said, still looking at the shelves.

Jonas snatched his hand away. "Sorry," he said, looking embarrassed. "That's pretty amazing, that whole--not the dying," he said. "Or almost dying. But the...you know, the..."

"Ascension," Daniel filled in.

"Yeah," Jonas said, deflating.

Daniel glanced away momentarily when Jonas continued staring once he'd finished sketching. "I was sorry to see what happened to Kelowna," he said. "And the fallout--I wish I could have done something. But you've done a good job here, so thank you. For watching their backs."

"Whoa," Jonas said. "That's...a little creepy. I mean, yeah, sure."

Jack's voice in the office called sharply, "Jonas? You all right?"

"Colonel, we're in here," Jonas said.

Daniel turned around just as Teal'c stepped in with a _zat'nik'tel_, Jack and Sam both behind him. "That won't do you any good," Daniel said, nodding to the zat, but even as he spoke, it was already being lowered. "And I'll thank you not to zat my artifacts."

"Oh my god," Sam whispered.

Jonas swallowed. "He said he's--"

"Daniel Jackson?" Teal'c said.

"Sam," Daniel said. "Teal'c. Jack. I need your help. Abydos is in danger, and soon, Earth will be, too. Do you remember the Eye of Tiamat? Well, there were five others, each very powerful on its own, but to use them in combination increases their power tenfold. Anubis wants them. He already has most of them, but he's missing the Eyes of Tiamat and Ra. He'll head for Abydos soon to look for the Eye of Ra. Now, either it's still there, in the secret chamber--you know the one I'm talking about, under the pyramid--or we brought it back without realizing it."

"I don't think it's here," Jonas offered.

"Yeah, I'm getting that impression," Daniel agreed. "There's not a lot of time. Anubis can't get the Eyes of Ra and Tiamat. If he does, he'll be unstoppable--"

The sound of a throat clearing stopped him. "Hey, Daniel," Jack said casually, sticking his hands into his pocket and taking a few steps forward. "How're you doing? Long time. How are things on the higher planes?"

Daniel bit his lip and stared at the floor until he lost the urge to do something the Others couldn't help but notice.

Fine. He could play this game.

"Hi, Jack," Daniel said, imitating Jack's casual tone and drawing the others' incredulous stares. "I'm great. How--how are you doing?"

"Fine," Jack said, shrugging. "Just fine."

"Oh, good," Daniel said, smiling in a way that he hoped conveyed his deep annoyance. "Good. So...what's new?"

"Um...actually, a funny thing happened to me today," Jack said, raising his eyebrows. "I'm getting off the elevator, and Teal'c grabs me. Says something funny's going on in the archaeology office, and I thought, what could possibly happen in a boring old archaeology office?" Daniel pressed his lips together. "But when I get there, an old friend of mine--someone who...never calls, never writes--"

Daniel rolled his eyes.

"--just shows up," Jack went on, "and tells us about this very important and apparently urgent mission that needs my attention."

A glance away showed that Anubis's fleet was in the midst of ransacking one of Marduk's old planets, but soon, they were going to put the Eye of Tiamat aside and start looking for Ra's planets instead. "Are you going to help," Daniel said, annoyed, "or--"

"No, wait, wait," Jack said. "Let me tell it--it's good. You see, this friend of mine has...Ascended. To a whole new level of existence." Daniel nodded slowly. "Do you see the irony? He's asking for _our_ help, and he's this great and powerful being."

"Jack, we've been through this," Daniel said. "I can't actually do anything. Just talking to you is a violation."

"What, like jay-walking, double-parking..." Jack said.

"Wait a minute, Colonel, you've seen him before?" Jonas interrupted.

"Uh..." Jack shrugged. "Yeah, actually. Wasn't sure at the time, but, yeah."

"I also have seen Daniel Jackson before now," Teal'c said.

"Yeah, me too," Sam said, looking surprised. To Daniel, she added, "That's why you wouldn't talk to me! Because it's a violation of some kind?"

"I didn't know that," Jonas said, though he looked more curious than disappointed.

"Well, you got here first this time," Daniel said impatiently. "Was _anyone_ listening to the part about Anubis? I really, really need your help."

"Didn't you say you were an Ancient?" Jonas said.

"What?" Sam said.

Daniel found Ra's Ancient tablet again and waved at it where it lay on the shelf. "Yeah, I just found out. Not...not _me_, but the Others like me--they're the Ancients. I sort of suspected, but I never knew..."

She stepped closer to join him in peering at it, as if he'd never left at all. "We never even considered that possibility. Is this Ra's tablet from Abydos? What's it say?"

"That..." Daniel skimmed the tablet. "...the Ancients were a race of humans who lived long before we did. They were destroyed by a plague--many of them learned to Ascend, and the others died out. And...and it talks about a lost city." A chilling thought struck him. "When Anubis comes here looking for the Eyes of Tiamat and Ra, you can't let him take that tablet. If he finds the lost city of the Ancients before you...then the war's over and we lose."

"Why would Anubis look for the Eyes here?" Jonas said. "He doesn't know Earth has one of them. Right?"

Daniel continued staring at the tablet until he could be sure his expression was completely blank when he looked up. "Don't underestimate him," he said without answering the question. When Jack started to narrow his eyes, as if in suspicion, Daniel added, "Anubis is Ascended."

"_What_?" Sam said again, her eyes wide.

"Or...half-Ascended or something in between," Daniel said. "The Others sent him back, but not all the way because they...they couldn't or wouldn't--I don't know, I don't really care. The point is, he's obviously found a way to keep a physical form, which does limit him, and he's under some restrictions, but he's a lot more than you think he is, too. Do not underestimate him."

This tablet wasn't all--it was just the first piece of a puzzle. This one told of the Lost City, but it would take some more searching to find where the City actually was. He'd never seen it before and suspected it was one of the things the Others didn't trust him with, but if Daniel looked for it specifically, now that he knew what he was looking for and he knew who the Ancients actually were, he was certain he could find it. If nothing else, he could ask Ganos Lal under the guise of still being curious about the Ancients and then somehow find a way to lead SG-1 to the city.

"So..." Jack said. "A partially incorporeal force of evil with superpowers is collecting the pieces of a super-weapon."

"That's one way to put it," Daniel said. "He's going to start by tearing Abydos apart, and if he gets his hands on the Eyes before you do, he'll come here and destroy Earth."

"Where exactly is the Eye of Ra in that secret chamber?" Sam said cautiously.

"I don't know," Daniel said.

She raised her eyebrows. "You don't _know_?"

"See," Jack said, gesturing with a hand, "I'm starting to think this whole Ascension business is a bit overrated."

_Me too_, Daniel thought, but pointed out, "If I'd died instead, you wouldn't have had any warning before Anubis came this time."

"So _do_ something about that," Jack said.

"If I take any action on my own," Daniel repeated slowly, "Oma will stop me to prevent the Others from stopping her and all of her followers. I'm walking a very fine line already. I can't jeopardize what she does for people, and she wouldn't let me."

"So, what," Jack said, "we skip on over to Abydos and look for a...what does it even look like?"

"Uh...like this, I think," Jonas said, picking up the quick sketch he'd made.

Daniel glanced at it and nodded, satisfied that it was a decent approximation of the _wedjat_. "Think of what the Eye of Tiamat looks like," he said. "It looks similar, but with _that_ symbol on it, possibly some Goa'uld writing on the side. It's--"

_[Dan'yel,]_ Sha'uri said. _[Where are you?]_

"Hello?" Jack said, waving his arm through Daniel's chest. "It's...?"

"I have to go," Daniel said distractedly.

"Now? Where?" Sam said, her eyes widening.

"I've told you what you need. Don't...don't lose that tablet about the Ancient city; I'll help you with the translation when this is done"--Jonas was already starting to take it from the shelf, wrapping it carefully and setting it aside--"and get the Eye of Tiamat from...your lab, Sam, or Area 51, wherever you put it. Keep it close. And Abydos--"

_[Dan'yel, are you there?]_

"Daniel?" Sam said.

"Anubis cannot get the Eyes," Daniel said, looking at Teal'c, because whatever the others thought or felt, Teal'c would remind them that there was a serious risk-benefit ratio to consider for this mission. "I told Skaara to meet you when you go to Abydos. He'll brief you on their situation then. Uh...oh, and extra artillery wouldn't hurt."

"Daniel!" Jack snapped, but by then, he was already on his way.

...x...

Sha'uri was in the empty house where Daniel had used to live as a child. Sounds from outside said that there were still people here, in the village, but a quick look showed him that most of the Nagadans had already evacuated and were on their way to Kalima.

"Has Kasuf gone ahead?" Daniel said when he arrived.

She spun around to face him. "Yes," she said. "I am to lead the last group."

"Then go. Hurry."

"No," Sha'uri said instead, any of her previous surprise or awe dissipated into firm protectiveness. "Warriors from other villages have come to join the fight, but if Anubis is coming here, then fleeing to the mountains will not save any of the Abydonian people, no matter how many try to oppose him. There is not enough time for all of us to leave through the Stargate, but if we are to fall, we would die fighting, not hide to wait for our slavers."

"Anubis does not care about Abydos itself," Daniel said, hoping he was right. "I will make sure that he has another goal he cares about more. You only need your fighters to buy enough time for the Tau'ri to play their part here."

"To play their part," Sha'uri repeated, staring at him. "I know you, brother. You are hiding something--if not from us, then from them, and if not that, then from someone else. Are we also only playing our part in your game?"

"This is not a game," he said, even though she was right in many ways. He would simply have to finish it before he had a chance to feel guilty about it. "You know me, Sha'uri--trust me. Everything I have done since leaving this world the first time was try to keep Abydos safe."

She nodded and looked down. "I know," she said. "We will fight on your word. But Dan'yel, you have lived on a world that knows a woman can fight beside her brothers."

Daniel had almost been expecting something like that from her, after all she had seen and done. "Skaara's men were trained; most of the women are not. We need each gun in the hands of someone who at least knows how to use it."

"What about me?" she countered. "I know more of war than any of my brother's men."

"Skaara can command warriors, but he does not know how to lead a world," he said. "You were taught to follow Kasuf as leader. Abydos will not be left unharmed, Sha'uri. When Anubis comes, we will need warriors. In the days after that, you will need leaders. And I...would like to know that someone who understands will watch over our people after this."

She narrowed her eyes. "Where will _you_ be?" she said, sounding suspicious.

"I will be with those who stay and fight," he said and didn't try to guess where he'd be afterward. He couldn't say much for the fate of the ones who stayed to fight, and even though he knew it had to be this way, he hoped she could forgive him for what he was sending her brothers into. "I am not saying this only for you, sister. They need you."

"And they believe in you," she said quietly. "Do not give us hope and then take it away."

Daniel took a breath. "But they won't survive on hope alone. You can help to give them the rest. Please, Sha'uri. You have to go now."

"The people would do almost anything for you," she said.

"Not for me," he said quickly with a pang. "Abydos has had enough of following the words of people who claim to be more than men. Let me be part of your history. Lead them to Kalima so they can be free, in their own name."

Sha'uri nodded, looking satisfied with that answer. "Promise me you will return," she said. "I have lost enough brothers, and I will have lost more before Anubis finishes here."

"I promise," he lied, because he would have promised anything to speed them along. He might not know what would happen to him afterward, but they would be safe by then, and Sha'uri and Kasuf and the others would push through, no matter what. He had not lied when he had said Abydos was strong. "Anubis will be here in days, maybe less. You must leave now."

...x...

Daniel waited and watched and _waited_ until he was sure everything was going to plan. When the preparations were underway on both sides, he slipped into Anubis's _hatak_. This time, he went directly to the _peltak_, where Anubis sat on his throne.

The First Prime strode in. "My lord," he reported, "we have turned the _hatak_ toward Abydos."

Anubis didn't move at all as he said, "Good. We can seek the Eye of Tiamat again once we have the Eye of Ra."

The Jaffa hesitated for a moment, as if unsure whether to stay or to go, then finally bowed to Anubis's back and left.

"You won't do anything to Abydos," Daniel said once they were alone.

Not turning, Anubis said, "And _you_ will stop me?"

"I can," Daniel said. "You know I can."

"What I know," Anubis said, turning to look at him, "is that you can do nothing but stand there and utter empty threats, and that you will stand by and watch as I destroy your world."

Leaving no room in his mind for apology--or for imagining the look on Jack and Sam and General Hammond's faces--Daniel said, "The Tau'ri will find the Eye of Ra before you."

Anubis fell silent for a moment. "You told them," he said, almost disbelieving. "What about the Others?"

"Like you said, Jim," Daniel taunted. "Sometimes, someone has to take a risk. You won't tell them, will you, Jim. I'm pretty sure you're the one person they like less than me."

"Then I will have to take the risk of destroying Earth," Anubis countered, and then laughed, sounding genuinely amused. "Ah--I understand now. Daniel Jackson, blood of Tau'ri but son of Abydos. You would let your base be destroyed in the place of your home."

_You could never understand_, Daniel thought. "So you're going to destroy Tau'ri, are you?" he said. "And let the Eye of Ra be destroyed with it?"

"I will find the Eye of Ra first," Anubis said confidently, "and then Tau'ri will fall."

"Then I suppose you're willing to let the Eye of Tiamat join the debris of Tau'ri?" Daniel said, and had the momentary satisfaction of seeing Anubis's armored hand tighten around his chair. "That's right--they found it when you couldn't. Turn around now. If you harm Abydos or Tau'ri, they will destroy both of the Eyes. And then I will destroy _you_."

"There is nowhere you can go that I will not see," Anubis said. "And the Others will stop you if you touch me."

_I know_, Daniel thought, and said, "You can't watch me where I go, not this time. If you watch me and act on the intelligence you gained as an Ascended being, the Others will stop _you_." He had no idea whether or not that was a bluff, but hopefully, Anubis was wary enough of the Others that he would err on the side of caution.

"Get off my _hatak_," Anubis said, finally standing to loom close to Daniel, until his mask was visible. "Or stay and watch as your home burns."

Daniel had to risk it. Abydos wouldn't escape unharmed, but Anubis would be in a hurry to get to Earth; he wouldn't take the time needed to lay waste to Abydos. They could rebuild. Daniel hoped he wasn't wrong and quickly quashed the doubt that lingered in his mind. He had to be sure of what he was doing.

"I won't be staying," Daniel said as he turned to leave. "I have better things to do."

...x...

"Lord Yu," Daniel said.

Yu whirled around. His First Prime darted in front of him, staff weapon raised and primed, but before he could shoot, the Goa'uld grasped him by the shoulder to stop him. "You," he said, looking at Daniel, surprised for a brief moment before recognition changed into anger. "How did you board my _hatak_?"

"If you thought I was dead, you were almost correct," Daniel said, moving deliberately so that his arm sank into part of the wall. Yu's eyes fixed on that, and his First Prime froze where he stood. "_Tal bet, Jaffa_. And don't call your other guards. I won't let anyone else see me, and they'll think you're losing your mind...more than they already think it, I mean."

"How dare--" the First Prime started.

"Oshu, _ar'ee_," Yu interrupted.

Daniel watched the Jaffa, Oshu, who lowered his weapon but didn't quite obey the order to stand down. "Am I wrong?" Daniel asked him honestly.

Part of him hoped he _was_ wrong--dealing with the Goa'uld was complicated enough without adding senility--while the rest hoped he was right. Convincing a Jaffa to see reason, especially one like Oshu, who seemed able to see through the godlike façade and maintain a respectably tight control nonetheless, might be easier than convincing a Goa'uld.

"Of course you are wrong," Oshu lied badly, standing squarely in front of the main console. It was obvious which of them was the one in control. "Lord Yu is a god."

"Silence!" Yu demanded again. But even furious, insulted, offended, and maybe a little threatened--his Jaffa had doubts about his mental faculties already, loyalty notwithstanding--Yu was a practical person, able to bend when he had to. "What do you want?" he demanded quietly. Oshu's jaw tensed, but he didn't speak.

Daniel looked outside. "So. You've been given command of the System Lords' armies. You hope to stop Anubis at Abydos?"

"I _will_ stop him," Yu said.

"The Asgard Supreme Commander Thor couldn't defeat Anubis's _hatak_," Daniel said. "Are your weapons are so much stronger than the Asgard's?"

"Anubis has one _hatak_," Yu pointed out. "I command many."

"Anubis has four of the six Eyes," Daniel countered.

"We will destroy him before he can find the last ones."

"Not if he destroys you first."

Yu clenched his jaw together and breathed in through his nose. "Tell Anubis we will not surrender," he spat.

"Do you really think I came from Anubis?" Daniel said, and added, to test the waters, "If not for him, I would have killed you and all the other System Lords that day at the summit--you must know that."

Yu was angry, but that didn't matter. Daniel's posturing here was for Yu's sake, but his information was for Oshu, the one in true command of the fleet. Interestingly, the First Prime's face showed as much hatred as his master's, and Daniel wondered how a man could see through his enslaver's lies and still serve as well as this Jaffa did.

All right. Then antagonizing Yu would get Daniel nowhere, but he could certainly use Oshu's loyalty. The Jaffa rebellion must seem like a betrayal of their principles to Oshu, too, if he still served the Goa'uld, which meant he could be made to cooperate by threatening exposure of Yu's weakness to the other Jaffa--some of them would desert or revolt.

"I came to offer you the last two Eyes," Daniel said. Yu didn't so much as twitch, but Oshu straightened, looking more closely at him. "The Tau'ri have one; soon they'll have the other. Anubis knows that and will seek both on Tau'ri, but you'll be waiting for him there, with the Tau'ri's two Eyes and your entire fleet."

"You deceived me once," Yu said. "You made a fool of me. How can I know you are not lying now?"

"I've been watching you," Daniel answered. "You've done more than any other to hold Anubis at bay, but you will need the SGC if you want to succeed without being killed yourself. The Tau'ri don't know how to use the Eyes--I assume you do."

But Oshu might not know, he realized. He watched the Jaffa, who looked uncertain for the first time as he stared back. "My lord?" Oshu said quietly when Yu didn't answer.

"Of course I know," Yu said angrily. "I am the oldest and wisest of the System Lords."

Daniel couldn't tell whether he was telling the truth or not, so he stilled the airborne vibrations near Yu's ears and said, "I can show you how." Oshu nodded very slightly. When Daniel was sure that Yu hadn't heard, he dropped his hold on the air.

"And what happens if the Tau'ri betray me?" Yu said.

"Don't worry about them," Daniel said. "Wait in orbit around Tau'ri--cloaked--and send word to the SGC. They will give you the weapons you need to defeat Anubis, and you must attack swiftly, without any hesitation, if you hope to win."

"I do not obey you, Daniel Jackson," Yu said. His lips twisted. "My traitorous _lo'taur_."

"You denied Anubis a place among the System Lords," Daniel said, "and you signed a treaty saying you would stop attacks on an Asgard Protected Planet. We've been on opposing sides, Lord Yu, but you have your honor and I have mine. Help me, and I'll help you. Are we agreed?"

Yu's lips were pressed together in a thin line, but he nodded. "If the Tau'ri give me the Eyes as promised," he said, "I will stop Anubis from attacking their planet. But if they betray me, I will consider the Protected Planets Treaty void." Daniel glanced once at Oshu, who nodded surreptitiously as well.

"I'll hold you to that," Daniel said, and let himself begin to dematerialize, knowing Yu and Oshu would see it as an inexplicable, glowing light. He didn't return completely to human form as he bluffed, "If you betray them, don't bother worrying about what the Asgard have planned for those who defy their treaty; I'll deal with you myself."

...x...

Once the ship was on its way to Earth, Daniel slipped into the engineering room and found Oshu waiting. After checking to see there was no one else there, Daniel walked up behind him. "This panel," he said. "Open it."

Oshu jumped, raising his staff weapon by reflex until he turned and realized who it was. "If you betray my master again..." he warned quietly.

"Open the panel," Daniel repeated. "_Now_. Unless you want someone else to walk in and realize your master is no longer fit to tell you this himself. And put down your weapon--you'll only damage the _hatak_ if you try to hit me."

A muscle twitched in Oshu's jaw, but he exhaled sharply and opened the panel with a jerk.

Daniel peered inside, quickly cataloguing the crystals stored in it. He didn't have all the knowledge of someone like Sam, but, unlike her, he could see and feel the energy emitting from each part of this ship if he chose and know what it was doing. "These crystals," he said, pointing. "And those, over there. No, not--yes, that one. Do you know what they are?"

Oshu touched one of them, then reluctantly shook his head. He was the general here, not the engineer. Like most high-ranking Jaffa, he probably knew basic protocols to replace or bypass malfunctioning systems, but that didn't mean he understood the hardware and how to adapt it for a new input. "I do not," he said resentfully.

"They set your weapons' controls," Daniel said. "That is what determines the energy output. Replace your usual weapons with the Eyes, and connect them to here and here. The naquadah rims around the Eyes will serve as an interface to your ship's power, but have your engineers bring materials to bridge the connection between the Eye and the weapon. You understand?"

"That is all?" Oshu said.

And what would happen when the fight was over?

Daniel stared at the panel, imagining not two Eyes, but six. Whoever won the battle would undoubtedly salvage the rest of the Eyes from the losing side, and all six Eyes in Yu's army wouldn't be much better than all six in Anubis's army. He couldn't play with Anubis's weapons, but he held influence over someone in control of Yu's ship. And whenever energy was being produced by naquadah in a some sort of reactor, there was always a chance of overloading it just by tweaking the right things. The tricky part would be timing...

An idea forming, Daniel said, "That is all," and quickly faded out of sight.

"And if you are lying?" Oshu said, still looking at the panel as if to commit it to memory. When Daniel didn't answer, he looked up, scowled to find himself alone.

Daniel silently melded into the ship's systems. There, he hesitated--Anubis was restricted to things he could have done as a mortal, and there was no telling what would happen if Daniel broke that rule. He peeked upward, though, and saw--

_[...is the core of our philosophy, Martouf,]_ Oma was lecturing as Martouf listened intently. _[Come--I can show you the...]_

Relieved, Daniel returned to the ship and pulled on the circuits, gently, creating a switch between the thermal output and the power input that would close once the weapon was deactivated. Hopefully, the overload wouldn't happen until after the battle was already won and would be enough to prevent anyone from having all six Eyes. Hoping no one had seen him, he withdrew.

...x...

Daniel looked over all of Abydos before joining SG-1 in the catacombs. They had taken the first day and night to organize the men and station them all around the pyramid, taking what little cover they could find. Teal'c was with them now while the rest searched the secret room Daniel and Skaara had found.

Finally, Anubis's mothership exited hyperspace, and Teal'c was shouting, aiming his weapon at an approaching _udajeet_ as the men around him raised their own guns.

"Daniel!" Jack yelled from the catacombs. "We're only here because of you!"

"Jack," Daniel said aloud. They spun around to see him. "It's here--I know it."

_"O'Neill, ground forces have landed,"_ Teal'c reported over the radio. _"We will not be able to hold them off for long!"_

"You hear that?" Jack said, pointing up toward the surface.

"I can't do anything about that," Daniel said. He'd already stepped far, _far_ too far.

"I don't care," Jack snapped. "Do _something_, or we walk."

There was a loud _boom_ from the surface. "Remember that fine line we were talking about?" Daniel said, wishing Jack didn't have the ability to push him past fact and into feeling.

"Cross it," Jack hissed.

"Maybe there's a secret compartment," Sam said, distracting them.

"A secret compartment in a secret chamber?" Jonas said skeptically.

"Why not?" Sam said.

Jonas raised his eyebrows, then shrugged. "Why not," he conceded. He picked up the nearest blunt object and began tapping the walls.

_"O'Neill, we cannot hold our position,"_ Teal'c said.

Jack reached up to his radio. "Fall back to the pyramid," he ordered, then lowered his hand. "Daniel, our people are getting slaughtered. If you're the person I used to know, _do something_."

Daniel swallowed hard, harshly pushing down a spike of apprehension. He looked back at the other two--they would find the Eye of Ra. They were almost there. He had done what he needed to do--his part was all but done.

"All right," he said, resigned now to whatever fate awaited him. He had never been one to do things by halves. "I'll help you hold them off."

Looking triumphant, Jack said. "You two stay here--Daniel, let's go." He started toward the stairs, Skaara behind him.

"Before I go," Daniel said, making his way toward the stairs leading out of the catacombs, "you should know that I told Anubis about the Eye of Tiamat. So once he knows that the Eye of Ra isn't on Abydos anymore, he's going to make his way toward Earth."

"What!" Jack said, running to catch up with him. "Daniel, what were you _thinking_? How could--_slow the hell down!_"

"Lord Yu is waiting for you at Earth," Daniel spoke over him, not slowing. The sound of gunfire and staff weapons was getting louder. "He has a fleet of motherships that should be in orbit soon, and he's agreed to stop Anubis if you give him the Eyes."

"Not a chance in hell!" Jack yelled. "Daniel--!"

"It's your _only_ chance!" Daniel yelled back, reaching the top of the stairs, only to find that Teal'c and Skaara's ragtag militia--the few who were left--had taken up position inside, closely pursued by Jaffa. Skaara ran to the other side and took cover. "It'll work. Hand over the Eyes when you get back. Yu has helped us before--Jack, _down!_"

Reflexively, Jack ducked as a staff blast flew over him and went harmlessly through Daniel's chest. The Jaffa who had shot it froze in shock, and someone's bullet tore through his side in that brief second.

Jack scrambled out of the way and behind a pillar. "Now would be a good time for some fireworks!" he suggested.

Even knowing there was no going back, knowing he didn't _want_ to go back and had already committed himself to whatever the Others had ready for him, Daniel still hesitated, some instinct for self-preservation overcoming his resolve.

Then, Tobay screamed as a staff blast struck him, and he fell--

--and Ascended.

Daniel stared as the glowing form rose. He wasn't the only one--the Jaffa seemed stunned into inaction, Skaara had lowered his weapon, and Jack was looking at Daniel. "Huh," Jack said, turning back to the fight and taking advantage of the Jaffa's momentary shock. "All right, well, take care of him up there--"

"That wasn't me," Daniel said. "Oma's here." _Recruiting_, he thought grimly with a pang he couldn't afford to feel now, _since she'll be losing her most recent follower_. Martouf must have run out of distractions by now. One false step, with Oma watching... Out of the corner of his eye, he saw one of the Jaffa recovering, raising his staff weapon while some of the Abydons were still distracted by Tobay's Ascension--"Skaara...no, _look out_!"

Too late--Skaara crumpled to the ground.

"Skaara!" Jack called, ducking and making his way around to Skaara. "Carter, what's taking so long!"

_"We found it, sir,"_ Sam said through his radio, the sound muffled by gunfire and yelling. _"We're on our way."_

Skaara wasn't moving. Another man was shot and promptly Ascended, but Skaara was still lying there, on the ground, and he wasn't Ascending. Daniel willed him to get up--he hadn't spent years scouring reports and hoping to find a trace of information that said Skaara was still alive, only to have him die now.

"--said, _do_ something! Do you hear me? Daniel!" Daniel turned. Jack was crouched over Skaara's body. "He's not gonna make it if we don't get him out of here," Jack called. "Whatever you're gonna do, this is our last chance!" He turned back to the fight and opened fire.

With no barriers or inhibitions remaining, Daniel took his place behind Jack, Teal'c, and the Abydons. He faced the Jaffa, closed his eyes, and let his image brighten, more and more, until everything else around him felt cold and he was standing in flaming light.

The shouting redoubled, but while the staff blasts faltered, the gunfire continued strong. Daniel opened his eyes again to see some of the Jaffa stumbling back, the rest squinting, as if they were shooting into a glaring sun.

"Keep firing!" Jack ordered. Those still alive--gods, only four left, Jack and Teal'c and two Abydons, one already injured but still firing, firing--responded eagerly, desperately, their backs to Daniel.

_Stop_, Oma said, whispering through his mind like a knife. _Stop it._

_I can't_, Daniel told her. _Go away. Please, Oma_.

_You have crossed a line,_ she said as staff blasts passed uselessly through him. _I can try to lessen your punishment, but there is a balance. For everything you do, I must take from you in return, or the Others will take from Abydos. Stop now_.

Daniel wondered what there was to take from him for holding the enemy off from Abydos, then decided that it didn't matter what they took from him. He'd called men here to die; the least he could do was make sure their families stayed safe, because if they lost now, they were all dead anyway. _No_, he told her. _My choice._

"Colonel, we...have it..." Sam's voice said. "Oh my god."

Daniel turned to see her holding the Eye of Ra in her hand, Jonas right behind. Sam thrust the Eye into Jonas's hands and rushed past, joining the fight.

"Dial Earth," Daniel told Jonas. "You're done here. Get back to the SGC for the next battle."

"For the what?" Jonas said, moving toward the DHD.

"Dammit, Jonas, dial!" Jack yelled. "Everyone fall back--fall _back_!"

A sound from the ceiling distracted Daniel. He looked up to see the ring mechanism opening, a matter stream already descending from the _hatak_ above. "Jack, rings!" Daniel called.

"Teal'c, get Skaara," Jack ordered, whirling to aim at descending rings as Daniel tried to make himself as blinding as possible to anyone who appeared on the platform. Even as he did all he could do without doing anything, the Stargate _whooshed_ open.

"Colonel, iris is open!" Jonas called. "We have to go!"

"They have the Eye," Anubis's First Prime yelled. "Stop them!"

"Jonas, take the Eye and go," Sam ordered.

_Daniel Daniel Daniel_, Oma said urgently, _the Others are watching. Now now now now--_

"Jack, hurry," Daniel said. "Teal'c--"

Energy crackled in the air above him. Daniel looked up, ignoring Jack as he emptied his last magazine with a curse, ignoring Sam as she shouted that they had to go, sir, they couldn't hold it any longer, ignoring Teal'c as he said Skaara's pulse was faint...

Anubis was in his _peltak_, his hand on the weapons console as he looked down at Daniel.

_Stop,_ Oma said.

"Don't," Daniel told Anubis, terrified, furious. "Don't you dare!"

_Try and stop me_, Anubis answered, and charged his weapon to fire.

"Run!" Daniel yelled. Sam was already through, Teal'c behind her with Skaara. Jack was the last, looking at Daniel--he was always the last, because he'd never leave a teammate behind--so Daniel screamed, "Now! Close the iris behind you--"

"Daniel--" Jack said.

"Jack--go!" Daniel said. He gathered everything he had and focused it upward, knowing he could stop the blast from reaching Abydos, if only they would let him--

_I'm sorry_, Oma said.

The blast shook the pyramid around him. Just as he felt the heat spread and collide with his own energy with a shuddering crash, Daniel's grasp was cut, and he felt himself being dragged away from where he stood. "No," he gasped. "Don't do this--"

_The Others will do worse_, she said.

"Nothing is worse!" he yelled, holding on with all his might. All he had ever held onto through the war was the hope that Abydos would stay safe. He had been devoted to his team and to the SGC, but they were warriors there, willingly facing the risks that all warriors faced; Abydos was their one haven that had managed to remain relatively unharmed if not unscarred, and it was all he had left to fight for. "_Nothing could be worse_!"

The pulling sensation paused, and he braced himself again against Anubis. _Daniel_... she said.

"Take anything from me," he begged, pushing, pushing, trying to force the evil that was trying to rain on his home. "Anything! Just let me do this one last thing." Heat was rising around him, pushing against his shield--Anubis had stopped firing and turned toward Earth, but there was too much naquadah in the land and the damage would be unstoppable if he let go now.

_They're here_, she said. _The Others have seen you, they're going to take away your--_

Something ripped itself violently from him.

Daniel felt himself shaking in its wake, not sure exactly what he had just lost and not completely sure where he was when it was gone, but it didn't matter, not now, so he gathered together the last bit of strength he had and pushed harder against Anubis's weapon, as hard as he could. The pressure began to lessen all around him, and--

_I have to act now_, Oma said, and Daniel was yanked away from the lower planes.

...x...

"What was that?" he said when he felt Oma's grip on him and they returned to Kheb. "What happened to Abydos? I didn't see everything--what happened?"

"As my punishment for the unwilling Ascension of six Abydonian lowers," Oma said, "the Others could not reverse what Anubis did."

"No--" Daniel gasped, and tried to escape her. Why wouldn't she let him see? "No! Oma?"

"And as your punishment," she continued, "they have taken your home from you."

"From...just from me? Am I exiled from there? What about my people?"

"You will never return home to Abydos again," Oma said. "Do you remember Nagada?"

"Remember what?" Daniel said. He tried to turn, to look, to see what had just happened. "I want to Descend," he said quickly. "I can choose to Descend! Like Orlin did, like...like Moros did to become Myrddin--"

"I cannot let you Descend with everything you learned here," she said, holding tight to him and not letting him turn or see anything other than Kheb. "All of that will be buried in your mind so far you may never find it again."

"Fine," Daniel said determinedly. "Fine! Let me go!"

"And--Daniel, _look at me_," she insisted, shaking him. "I told you there had to be a balance. What Anubis took from Abydos today in the wake of your manipulations, the Others have taken from you. That is gone. Not buried; gone. Do you remember your village--Nagada?"

"What village?" Daniel said, confused. "Oma, please--let me Descend, however it has to happen. I don't want this anymore. This isn't my path."

Her grip tightened even more. "You tricked me," she said, and he had been anticipating her anger so much that he was staggered to hear only hurt and betrayal in her words.

"I'm sorry," he said, remembering all the times she'd led him by the hand and guided him when he'd been lost. "Oma, I'm sorry. I had to."

"I know. And I'm sorry, Daniel," she whispered for the last time, and then, he saw nothing more.

* * *

Continued in Part IV: The Lost


	11. Part IV: The Lost, 1 of 4

**XXXXX**  
**Part IV: The Lost**  
**XXXXX**

_**3 May 2003; Embarkation Room, SGC; 2000 hrs**_

"Close the iris!" Jack called, but it was already closing as he stepped through and made his way toward his team.

"Where's that med team!" Carter was snapping. "Come on, Skaara, stay with us--"

"Shut it down!" Jack ordered.

The ramp trembled. The wormhole shut down.

Dr. Fraiser, directing a gurney up the ramp, caught the railing for balance. She turned an alarmed look on Jack, but quickly returned to her job, ordering, "Let's move--I want him in OR One right away."

Jack watched them hurry out with Skaara's limp form. "What just happened?" Jonas said, staring at the iris, just now retracting from the Stargate.

"Abydos was hit," Jack said.

"You saw it?" Carter said.

"I felt it," he said. "Just before I came through."

Carter narrowed her eyes, then strode from the embarkation room. Jack caught Teal'c and Jonas's gazes, shrugged, and followed her up into the control room. "...full 'gate diagnostic," she was saying as they entered.

"Colonel," Jonas said while Sergeant Harriman hurried to obey, "what happened to...uh, Daniel?"

Carter glanced up at them but refocused back on the computers. "I don't know," Jack said. "He was doing his glowy thing. Told me to run and close the iris."

"A large burst of energy was transmitted through the wormhole just after Colonel O'Neill came through," Harriman said.

"We're lucky they closed the iris when they did, sir," Carter said, straightening to look at Jack. "A massive energy wave followed you through the wormhole."

_Crap. _"Redial," Jack ordered.

As the Stargate began to turn, General Hammond entered the control room. "Good--you're back," he said. With a glance out the window, he asked, "What's going on?"

"We think Anubis hit Abydos, sir," Jack said. "There are still on the order of ten thousand civilians on the planet. We're trying to dial now to check--"

"No time for that, Colonel," Hammond interrupted. Jack looked away from the Stargate in surprise, but the general's face was grim. "Do you have the Eye of Ra?"

Jonas held it up. "Yes, sir, we have it."

"Chevron six encoded," Harriman said, and even the general paused for a moment to watch. "Chevron seven..." The Stargate stopped. Nothing happened. "...will not lock."

"Their 'gate could be buried," Carter said. "Or something could be malfunctioning on their end."

"Maybe," Hammond said impatiently, "but it's not something we have time to figure out now. Lord Yu is in our orbit and has initiated communications with us.

"Son of a bitch," Jack said. He'd almost forgotten about what Daniel had said--what had he been _thinking_, leading not one but _two System Lords_ to Earth?

"He says," Hammond went on, "that Daniel Jackson of SG-1 appeared on his ship and promised him the Eyes of Ra and Tiamat. As much as I don't want to believe that, I don't see how else Yu would even know about Mr. Jackson's...current state, much less his involvement and the fact that we have the Eyes."

"Sir, that's not possible," Carter started, looking confused. "Daniel would never--"

"Actually, he would," Jack said, torn between anger at Daniel and wishing he were there so he could explain to them how this idiotic plan wasn't going to fail miserably. "He said that he told Anubis we have the Eyes--said that Anubis was coming here to take them from us."

"_What_?" Carter said; she must not have heard that part.

"Apparently," Jack said, watching Hammond's jaw tighten, "he made some sort of deal with Yu--the Goa'uld--that we give him our two Eyes, and Yu gets to blast Anubis out of our orbit."

"He made...a _deal_ with a Goa'uld," Hammond repeated.

"I know!" Jack said, somewhat gratified that he wasn't the only one who found that crazy. "That's what he said."

"Well...I guess it wouldn't be the first time Yu has helped us," Carter said.

"He _has_ been almost an ally to us, at least where Anubis is concerned," Jonas offered.

"He's a Goa'uld," Jack countered.

"More importantly," Teal'c said pragmatically, "Anubis's ship is still superior to that of Yu, and he is still in possession of four of the six Eyes."

Hammond folded his arms. "Yu claims to have the collective forces of the System Lords behind him. He uncloaked his ships very briefly, and satellites confirm that there seems to be a very large Goa'uld fleet up there."

As Jack tried very hard to figure out how that was ever a good thing, Jonas said, "We'd still be giving two powerful weapons to Yu. Even if he is essentially the lesser of two evils..."

"I realize that," Hammond said. "But I'm not sure we have a choice."

"Dammit, Daniel," Jack muttered.

"Speaking of Mr. Jackson..." Hammond said. "I don't suppose there's a way to contact him?"

"Maybe he'll show up on his own," Jonas said hopefully. "He said there was a translation he would help me with, and he was very, uh...direct about helping us today. If this was his plan, maybe he'll come back to make sure it goes through."

Jack knew better, though, and so did the rest of them who'd really known Daniel. "I'm...not sure that we can count on him for anything anymore," Carter said.

"He would have done everything in his power to protect Abydos and its people," Teal'c said. "If something--or someone--prevented him from doing so..."

"He told us the Others would stop him," Jack said. "His brother's half-dead in our infirmary and their 'gate won't lock. Something happened to him."

Hammond sighed. "Unfortunately," he said, "we can't worry about him now. Abydos is one of the closest planets in the network; Anubis will be here soon. What do we do about Lord Yu? He's waiting for our answer, and from his last transmission, he's getting impatient."

"Is the Eye of Tiamat already here, sir?" Carter said.

"It arrived from Area 51 just after you left," Hammond confirmed.

"Have we attempted to reach the Asgard?" Teal'c said.

"We've been trying and will keep trying," Hammond said, "but so far, nothing. Besides, Anubis and Osiris have already shown they're not afraid of the Asgard; Thor almost died the last time he stepped in for us."

Jack looked at the console. Yu had saved his life--or his sanity--by using SG-1's information to take out Ba'al's outpost, and he'd saved Teal'c's and maybe even the entire Jaffa rebellion by exposing Kytano as Imhotep. He didn't seem to care much about the SGC, except in the general sense that humans were supposed to be lower than Goa'ulds, and he was probably less likely than any other Goa'uld to turn on them without direct provocation. When talking about Goa'uld integrity, though, that wasn't saying very much.

"It seems we have little choice," Teal'c said, "and we have little time. We have less than a day before Anubis arrives from Abydos."

"Colonel?" Hammond said. "Your opinion?"

Shaking his head, Jack said, "We don't even have the _Prometheus_ right now, much less something that can stand against Anubis. We're dead if we don't do it, sir."

Hammond pursed his lips. "We have a few F-302s ready for deployment--I had them taken to Peterson as soon as Yu first contacted us, so they're close by, and we have several pilots who've trained on simulators. You don't think there's any way we could handle this, even use the Eyes on our own?"

"Uh...sir," Carter said, "if we give the Eyes to Yu, who presumably knows how they work, he just _might_ have a chance against Anubis with the help of an entire Goa'uld fleet. A couple of F-302s with much weaker weapons and shields simply aren't going to cut it, even if I could figure out in time how the Eyes worked."

"And Anubis is Ascended," Jonas added. At Hammond's incredulous look, he said, "Or something. Daniel Jackson was very clear that Anubis is more than we thought he was."

Jack grimaced but could do nothing but shrug. It actually explained a lot about Anubis, unfortunately. "All right," Hammond finally said. "Sergeant, get Yu back on the line."

"Yes, sir," Harriman said.

Hammond put his hand over the microphone and said, "SG-1, the Eyes and a few other supplies are prepared for you. Bring them to Peterson. Stay in contact, and I'll give you further instruction on how to deliver them once I've spoken to him again."

...x...

"I still can't believe Daniel would have sent Anubis here," Carter said as they drove. "There must be something else we're missing..."

"You know what," Jack said, "I think this was _exactly_ it. Abydos stays safe, Earth is protected by Yu, we stick a thumb in Anubis's eye...everyone's happy."

"Except that Abydos...well..." Jonas started, then trailed off.

"Apparently, someone miscalculated a little. Or else he'd _be here right now!_" Jack said loudly to the roof of the car. He waited a few seconds and even checked the rearview mirror, just in case, but no one appeared out of thin air.

A fresh tendril of grief tried to creep closer. They'd finally gotten to talk to him and gotten a chance to work together again, in whatever form that took...how could they have lost him _again_?

"I hate this," Jack muttered. He slapped the steering wheel.

Carter offered, "If I had to trust a Goa'uld..."

"Yeah, that's the problem," he said. "Who else but Daniel would do something as stupid as making a bargain with a Goa'uld and expecting him to hold up his end of it?"

"Yu has shown great determination to defeat Anubis," Teal'c said, "and Daniel Jackson's actions have proven insightful in the past."

"They've also been reckless," Jack snapped, drumming his fingers restlessly. "How many times have you had to tell him to tone it down, huh? Who's doing that now if it's not us?"

"Martouf?" offered Jonas, who mostly thought of Daniel as a particularly cool and shiny (literally) part of SGC mythology.

"Daniel respected--_respects_ Martouf," Carter said. "That doesn't translate into taking his orders."

"Maybe he just knows what he's doing," Jonas said optimistically. "He knew about Kelowna, after all. He said he saw it but couldn't do anything."

"Which just means he's alone, powerful, and _frustrated_," Jack pointed out, remembering their conversation in Ba'al's prison, the way they'd snapped at each other that they should, could, shouldn't, wouldn't act. "Take it from us, Jonas--that's a dangerous combination."

Carter's phone rang. Jack focused on the road and not the fact that he wasn't sure whether or not he'd get a chance to yell at Daniel for this one.

"General Hammond wants us to deliver the Eyes by F-302," Carter finally said when she'd hung up. "Lord Yu will let us into his bay of his mothership."

Jack imagined floating around in space in a tiny glider, sticking their noses into the middle of a fleet of warlord who hated them. Apparently, he wasn't the only one thinking it, because Jonas said, "Is that, um...really the wisest idea?"

"Well," Carter said, "we could invite the Goa'uld to send an _al'kesh_ full of Jaffa down to Earth to collect the Eyes instead, but the general doesn't seem to think that's a good idea."

"Also very true," Jonas conceded.

"Oy," Jack sighed.

"Besides," Carter added, digging through the supplies Hammond had sent with them, "the general wants to know how things are turning out so he knows if and when Anubis is going to hit Earth. If we go up ourselves, we can leave bugs behind."

"Ah," Jack said. "Now _there_'s an idea I can live with."

"I'll key the transmission to the secure channel we use for communications with the Tok'ra--it should let us keep track of what's happening as long as Yu is in our orbit or relatively close to our system."

"Unless Yu gets blown up by Anubis," Jonas said.

"It's something," Jack allowed. "At least we'll _know_ if he does, not that it'll matter much by then."

...x...

_**3 May 2003; Peterson AFB, Earth; 2045 hrs**_

"Teal'c," Jack said as they strode toward the F-302s on the runway, "take Jonas up in that one. Carter, you're with me."

Carter climbed into the back of one '302, holding the sack containing the Eyes. She put on her headset and then pulled out the transmitters they were to use as bugs, quickly turning one on, slipping it in with the Eyes, and securing it under a flap in the bottom of the bag with a simple strip of tape. Jack settled into his seat and waited for Carter to join him as Teal'c ushered Jonas into the next glider over.

Securing his headset, Jack keyed the SGC's channel. "SGC, this is SG-1. Do you read?"

_"Loud and clear, Colonel,"_ General Hammond's voice said through the earpiece.

"We're just about ready to take off now, sir," Jack said, making sure his mask was on tightly. He glanced over his shoulder to see the shield close over Teal'c and Jonas, checked that Carter was in place, and sealed the cockpit of their own '302.

_"Stay in contact while you're up there,"_ Hammond said. _"We'll keep track of your progress from here. Good luck."_

Teal'c powered his engines. "Thank you, sir," Jack said, following his lead. "Carter, we good?"

"Yes, sir, ready for takeoff," she said. "I've got the signal from Yu's ship. Transmitting to your terminal now. Teal'c, Jonas, you too."

Jack waited until the information blinked onto his screen. "Location received. Hold tight."

_"Sir, the fleet is cloaked,"_ Carter reminded him when they broke atmosphere and he scanned the space before them for any signs of Goa'uld motherships. _"You'll have to go on the proximity sensors' data alone."_

Jack adjusted his headset, switched to the correct channel, and hailed, "This is Colonel O'Neill of the SGC requesting entry to Lord Yu's mothership. Please respond."

Immediately, an unfamiliar voice answered, _"Do you have the Eyes of Tiamat and Ra?"_

"We do," Jack said. "Who's this?"

_"I am Oshu, First Prime to Lord Yu,"_ the voice answered. _"Our bay has been opened for entry. I will meet you with three other Jaffa. If you take any hostile action, we will respond immediately with force and leave your planet to the mercy of Anubis."_

Jack rolled his eyes, but just barely stopped himself from jerking the controls when a mothership suddenly appeared out of blank space, just in front of him and Carter. Now, _that_ was something that had never happened before alien spacecraft had entered the picture. "Geez," he muttered. "All right, we're coming in. Don't shoot." Switching back to the other channel, he added, "Teal'c, wait for us to get in and then come in after us."

They glided carefully into the open hangar and settled. Teal'c swept in and landed beside them.

"We're in," Jack said into his headset.

The bay doors slid closed behind them. _"Gravity and life support have been activated in the bay,"_ Oshu's voice said. _"You may disembark."_

Popping the top of their '302, Jack quickly climbed out. He keyed open the door leading to the main deck of the ship, then led the way in with Carter. Teal'c followed, blocking the view of anyone who might be watching as Jonas accidentally dropped his hat and bent to pick it up, leaving another bug stuck in the corner.

As promised, four Jaffa strode in to meet them, staff weapons in hand but not at the ready.

"We brought the Eyes," Jack said.

Carter held up the bag and stepped forward to hand it over. "In here," she said, opening it and tilting it toward them to show the two jeweled devices inside.

The First Prime waved one of his men forward. "If you have tampered with them in any way..." he warned.

"Oh, for cryin' out loud, just take the damn things!" Jack snapped.

Jonas winced as someone started to bring his staff weapon to bear, then stopped upon the First Prime's signal. "Colonel..." he said quietly.

But Jack was pissed off and Daniel was dead again, but not before making a deal with a Goa'uld that involved ships shooting at each other above Earth, so he went on sharply, "We're not any happier about this than you are, pal. Actually, that's our planet down there, so we're probably a lot _less_ happy. So if we could move it along..."

One of the Jaffa accepted the bag from Carter, who backed away again as he pulled out the Eyes and tossed the bag on top of a nearby cargo box. "They are real," the Jaffa said.

"Happy?" Jack said.

"You may go," Oshu said simply, touching a panel on the wall. The door opened, revealing the glider bay. "Leave immediately."

Jack didn't need to be told twice.

XXXXX

_**3 May 2003; Control Room, SGC; 2130 hrs**_

"Good work," Hammond said absently when they returned. "We've been receiving transmission on and off for half an hour now."

"On and off, sir?" Jack repeated.

"That location was not ideal for planting spying devices," Teal'c said. "Few Jaffa are likely to have been talking within range of our transmitters."

"But at least it's by the glider bay," Carter said. "People are going to be gearing up for the fight and passing through there. We should hear a lot more once Anubis arrives and it gets underway."

Jack folded his arms, almost wishing Anubis would just get here now and get all of this over with, preferably with Earth still in one piece when all was said and done. "How much longer do you think?" he said.

She looked up from adjusting their communications device and exchanged a glance with Teal'c. "We have never seen anything like Anubis's _hatak_ vessel," Teal'c said. "Perhaps a few hours."

Hammond took a deep breath. "We've gone on alert," he said. "Britain, France, Russia, and China have, too. At the first sign of an attack--by Anubis _or_ Yu--we'll hit back with everything we've got and start evacuation to the Alpha Site. People are on their way here now."

"Great," Jack muttered, already imagining more political rumblings about the SGC's way of dealing with things. He drummed his fingers on the opposite arm. "You said hours, right?"

"Perhaps," Teal'c reiterated.

_"...lak konach garik'ko..."_ a Jaffa on Yu's ship finally said in passing.

"What'd he say?" Carter asked.

"He is informing his friend that he needs to use the latrine," Teal'c translated, sitting down and slipping on a pair of headphones to hear more clearly.

Jack rolled his eyes.

"And," Teal'c added, "the friend responded that he is hungry."

"Sir, permission to check on Skaara?" Jack said, hoping his tone conveyed how close he was to dying of anticipatory boredom.

"He just came out of surgery an hour ago, Colonel," Hammond said. "Dr. Fraiser says he's stable. You can check on him when this is over."

"I should go call a few more Goa'uld translators," Jonas said. "When the battle starts, it could get pretty hectic. We don't want to miss anything anyone says."

Jack pulled out a chair and sat down, almost wishing Anubis would just attack and get it over with.

Soon, Jonas had joined Teal'c at another console, and so had another man and two women from his department. Every once in a while, one or more of them scribbled out a line of speech, though, from what Jack was seeing, nothing interesting was going on yet. Jonas was frowning as he listened--the kid learned fast, but he wouldn't be completely fluent in Goa'uld military slang after only a year of study. Even Daniel had needed an almost obsessive fascination with Teal'c, enforced boredom, and a lot of practical experience before he had had the linguistic skill to play the part of a loyal servant who spoke Goa'uld.

Teal'c, on the hand, looked like he'd rather be out there in a glider, and Jack agreed.

"If Anubis really pushes it, he could be here any second," Carter said when nothing interesting had happened an hour later.

Waiting, Jack decided, was the worst part.

...x...

"General Hammond!" Teal'c said suddenly. "Anubis has arrived. Yu is preparing to deploy all _udajeet_ and _al'kesh_ from all _hatak_ vessels under his command."

"We see Anubis in our orbit," Carter said, pulling her chair closer to her computer.

"China's seeing the same thing, sir," Sergeant Harriman reported, a phone to his ear.

"And Russia," another technician added.

"Anubis only seems to have brought his one _hatak_," Jonas said. "Yu is ordering his men to power his ship's weapon--"

"All ships and all weapons," one of the translators corrected.

"_Al'kesh_ have been launched," Teal'c said. "Gliders are being prepared. They have been ordered to surround Anubis's ship and attack from all sides once their weapon is used to penetrate Anubis's shield."

"Wait, wait, wait," Jonas said, holding up a hand. "Something's happening--Anubis stopped. Yu's saying...or...um..."

Teal'c leaned forward and routed the receiver Jonas was listening to through the main speakers.

The room seemed to freeze. Jack listened hard, catching one word in ten as two voices snapped at each other in Goa'uld--something about _surrender_, _kill_, and several more terms that he was pretty sure all meant various shades of _defeat_. "And?" he said during a lull in the conversation.

"Lord Yu says Anubis is in violation of the Asgard Protected Planets Treaty," Teal'c said. "His ship is surrounded, and he must...surrender the Eyes or be destroyed."

"Oh, for--" Jack started in disgust. If one Goa'uld had all six Eyes, it wouldn't matter much if it was Anubis or Yu, except that Anubis would be a slightly quicker route to Earth's destruction.

"It doesn't matter," Jonas said. "Anubis isn't going for it."

Then...

Silence.

"What's going on?" Hammond said when nothing happened. "Major?"

"The ships haven't moved, sir," Carter said, looking over a technician's shoulder. "Yu's ships must be uncloaked now, too--we're picking up many more ships around the first."

"They're firing," Jonas said.

"Who?" the general said, clearly as frustrated as Jack was.

"Yu, Anubis...everyone, sir," Jonas answered.

Jack lasted another minute before saying, "Why's it so quiet?"

"I don't know, sir," several someones said all at once.

"No one's talking in range of our bugs," Jonas added more helpfully. "Their fighters must've been deployed already, so no one's hanging around the bay."

But then... "Several ships are disappearing, from what our satellites see," Harriman said. "It's not clear yet whether they were destroyed or are reactivating a cloak. Or leaving, jumping into hyperspace--"

"Anubis's ship was damaged," Teal'c interrupted as another burst of barked orders came over the line. "He is attempting to flee. Yu's Jaffa are reporting that several _al'kesh_ escaped; it is unknown if Anubis is on one of them or is still on his _hatak_, but the _hatak_ itself no longer seems functional. Yu has ordered troops to board the _hatak_ to search for Anubis and the Eyes."

"At least Anubis's ship's dead in the air," Carter said.

"I'll feel better when _all_ the ships are _out_ of our air," Jack said. Whatever anyone tried to convince him, he was never trusting a Goa'uld with guns so close to them, even Yu.

"Several ships seem to have left our orbit over the last several minutes, sir," Harriman said.

Jonas shook his head. "Yu is still there, and there are still Jaffa searching Anubis's ship. Anubis...apparently isn't onboard anymore."

"He escaped," Carter guessed, "and some of Yu's forces probably pursued him--that would explain why so many ships suddenly left our orbit."

"And," one of the other translators added, "Yu's Jaffa found the weapon with the four Eyes. They're going back to Yu's ship and are going to pull back."

"So now Yu has all the Eyes," Jack sighed.

But just then a flurry of noise broke out from Yu's ship--someone speaking, Yu yelling, someone else calling out orders, clanking footsteps and weak reception obscuring each sound... "_Kheste_," Jonas swore, surprised into a rare slip of language, and even Teal'c looked intimidated by all that was going on before all sound stopped abruptly.

"Something has happened," Teal'c said.

"Something good or something bad?" Jack said.

"I am uncertain," Teal'c said.

"Sir, as far as we can tell, the ships have all left our orbit, with the exception of a few smaller vessels that could be simply disabled," Harriman said. "Unless they're cloaked or otherwise out of our sensors' range or sensitivity, the motherships are gone."

"Okay," Jack pointed out, "that's what I call 'something _good_.'"

"Can this be rewound?" Jonas asked, turning to Sam. "We'll need time to pick everything out. Too many people talking at once."

"Sir, our allies want to know what's going on," a voice from the other end of the console said.

"Then anyone who can speak Goa'uld will listen to the recording of that transmission as many times as you need to until you can tell me what the hell happened just now," Hammond ordered. "Don't celebrate yet, people. Anubis might still be out there somewhere, and Yu certainly is. Get to work." The translators jumped to obey. "And dial Abydos again."

XXXXX

_**4 May 2003; Briefing Room, SGC; 0800 hrs**_

"Still no lock on Abydos," Jack said the next morning.

"We've sent a message to the Tok'ra, asking them to send a scout ship to check," Carter added, "but, unsurprisingly, it might be a while before anyone's free and in the neighborhood."

Turning to Teal'c and Jonas, the general asked, "What about Yu and Anubis?"

"Yu is in possession of the Eyes of Osiris, Apophis, Seth, and Anubis," Teal'c said. "The Eyes of Ra and Tiamat appear to have been destroyed."

Carter's eyebrows flew upward. "What? Why?"

Jonas shrugged. "One of the Jaffa said something about the circuitry. Yu is really angry--the Eyes' crystals were fried, apparently from a power overload. And then someone found our bugs, so he got even _more_ angry, and...it got confusing after that. He started yelling about some other things, too, which didn't make a whole lot of sense."

"Like what?" Jack said.

"Like..." Jonas looked down at his notes. "That they needed to get to Abydos quickly to kill Anubis before he got to the Eye of Ra. Of course, someone mentioned they were past that part, and Yu said not to argue and go back to their homeworld. I'm not sure what he was angriest at, by that point--the Eyes or the fact that his Jaffa were questioning his orders."

"When we had the Eye of Tiamat at the SGC," Hammonds said, "our best investigators--with help and advice from a Jaffa and a Tok'ra--didn't know how it worked. Is it possible Yu's Jaffa really _did_ make some mistake?"

"Indeed," Teal'c said. "Even with what I have learned from the SGC, I would not have been able to use the Eyes. I had never even heard of such a technology."

"But," Jonas said, "judging by their conversation and the outcome of the battle, the weapon _was_ effective. In fact, it sounded like the malfunction was in the ship's internal system, not the Eyes."

"So either Yu hasn't been taking care of his mothership," Carter said, frowning, "which I find doubtful for someone as experienced as Yu, or the Jaffa fumbled through the installation on their own, barely got it functional, and are making excuses. And if it's the latter, how did they know how to do it at all, and what loyal Jaffa would lie about it afterward?"

Teal'c opened his mouth, then closed it and glanced at Jack. "Daniel talked to Yu," Jack said.

"You think...?" Jonas said.

"I don't know," Jack said, deciding that, right or not, he was going to take comfort in the fact that Daniel had made a deal with a Goa'uld but might have sabotaged it, too. It didn't really seem like Daniel's MO, but then, neither did sending a fleet of attack ships to Earth. Desperate times. "Either that, or Yu is losing it."

"The upshot is that if Yu thinks his Jaffa did something wrong, he won't be coming after _us_," Hammond said. "Do we know what happened to the other ships in the fleet?"

"We don't have an exact count, sir," Sam said, "but we synched the conversation with satellite data, and it looks like Anubis was able to take out almost half of the motherships on his own before they were able to damage his shield at all, probably using the Eyes. We think very few motherships actually survived by the time Anubis had to retreat."

"But Anubis survived."

"We must assume that he did," Teal'c said. "His ship may have been damaged, but several _al'kesh_ successfully entered hyperspace."

Hammond sighed. "And Yu has the other four Eyes."

"Better than all six," Jonas said. "If all of them together are ten times more powerful than the sum of its parts, that means four Eyes is...about...six-and-a-half percent the threat of all six together. Besides, Yu just lost a lot of his army. He'll need time to recover."

"However, Yu was able to penetrate Anubis's shield with only two of the Eyes, a feat that Thor could not accomplish," Teal'c pointed out.

"Thor was on his own," Jack defended his favorite Asgard.

"It is nevertheless true that even two of the Eyes were a formidable weapon against Anubis."

"Well, this will definitely give Yu an advantage over the other System Lords," Carter said, "but he also has all of their forces under his command. That _could_ be good for us, if the other System Lords' resentment makes them start attacking each other again--or even Yu--instead of us."

"I'm thinking lots of war while they all grab for the Eyes," Jack said.

"Let's hope that keeps them busy for a while," Hammond said. "What's our next step?"

"Well..." Jonas said tentatively. "There's that tablet Daniel Jackson showed us. He said it was about an important Ancient city and seemed very adamant that we had to find it."

"The Ancients did have very advanced technology," Carter said. "If we can find the city..."

"Weapons," Jack suggested, "made by an advanced race of humans who didn't like the Goa'uld."

"Make that tablet your priority, Mr. Quinn," Hammond ordered, and stood. "Stay on top of this--find out whatever you can from the Tok'ra over the next days and weeks, and Teal'c, I want any news you can get from the rebel Jaffa. Dismissed."

XXXXX

_**5 May 2003; SGC, Earth; 1400 hrs**_

Skaara opened his eyes. He blinked, surprised when his eyelids moved slowly, and tried to sit up.

Someone moaned, and only when the pain struck did Skaara realize that it had been himself.

"Don't move," a familiar voice said from the other side. With an effort, Skaara turned his head and saw O'Neill looking down at him. "I'd ask how you're feeling, but I think I know already."

Skaara blinked again.

Then he remembered--Anubis had been on Abydos. There had been Jaffa, and the Eye of Ra, and guns, and _Dan'yel_--

"Abydos?" he managed.

O'Neill's eyes flicked away, for just a second, but enough for Skaara to know something was wrong. "We're at the SGC," O'Neill said. "We're working on getting back to Abydos, but for now, your job is to get better. All right?"

"Abydos," Skaara insisted, pushing himself upward until the pain overwhelmed him and he couldn't tell whether he was lying down or sitting up. "D-dan'yel said..."

When he finally made himself open his eyes again, there was a woman next to him--he had seen her before, but his mind was slow and would not tell him who she was--he found that his hand was clenched tightly on O'Neill's. "He's not here," O'Neill said quietly. "You need to relax for now. When you wake up again, I'll explain everything to you. How's that sound?"

"Mm," Skaara heard himself say. The woman smiled and did something next to him. When the burning agony in his stomach began to decrease, he turned again and mumbled, "O'Neill?"

"You're gonna be fine," O'Neill said, patting him on the shoulder. "Go to sleep. I'll come down and see you again."

...x...

True to his word, O'Neill was there again when Skaara next woke. Skaara lay where he was for a while, watching O'Neill before anyone noticed that he was awake.

Most times, O'Neill seemed to be exactly who the legends said he was--the hero of Abydos, killer of false gods, the leader of SG-1 of the Tau'ri. Now, the leader of SG-1 was facing away, and no one else was in the room. As Skaara watched him make comical expressions while holding a shallow metal tray in front of his own face, he began to see what had made Dan'yel say that O'Neill was very different from what the stories said. O'Neill stuck his tongue out, and Skaara was surprised by a weak laugh.

Immediately, O'Neill turned around. He quickly put the tray back down on a table and made his loping way toward the bed. "Hello," O'Neill said.

"Hello," Skaara tried to answer, but he had to try twice to make sound emerge from his throat. As he shifted, the pain made itself known again, but it was duller than before.

O'Neill frowned down at him and played with the edge of his blanket, pulling it higher and then smoothing it back down to where it had been a moment before. Skaara watched him curiously. "So," O'Neill said, "how's it going?" Skaara swallowed. "Ah--here--"

A cup appeared in front of him. O'Neill's other hand slipped under Skaara's head and lifted just enough to drink the water inside. Skaara drank slowly, knowing that he was still weak and unwilling to cough should he choke.

Still, he was sweating by the time O'Neill lowered him back to the bed. He thought he should say 'thank you' but could not catch his breath.

"Take it easy," O'Neill said quietly, pulling a chair close and sitting at the side of the bed. "How's the pain?"

Skaara waited a moment to let the world slow in its spinning before he said, "It is...better."

Looking relieved, O'Neill said, "Good, because ol' Doc Fraiser wasn't going to give you any more of the happy juice for another few hours. Think you can make it that long?"

"Yes," Skaara said, trying to remember more of what had happened. He raised his arm--why was it so weak?--and tried to feel for his bandage, only to have it grabbed before he could touch.

"Ah-ah," O'Neill said, holding up a finger. "Leave that there."

Skaara closed his eyes for a second. "How did I come here?"

"Got yourself shot," O'Neill said simply. "We brought you back, and the doctors patched you up. Not gonna lie--it was pretty bad, but they say you're out of the woods now."

"The...woods," Skaara repeated, confused.

"Trees aren't even in sight," O'Neill assured him, waving a hand and explaining nothing. "You've got a ways to go, but you _will_ get better. So now, you get to rest here for a while, and then you'll start some physical therapy when you're a little better. Oh, that reminds me--I'm supposed to feed you before you fall asleep again."

O'Neill stood and pulled something behind Skaara so that part of the bed moved, gently raising him until he was nearly sitting. Then O'Neill turned around in a full circle before he spotted whatever he had been looking for. He picked up a tray full of small containers and carried it to a small table by Skaara's bedside. "What...?" Skaara said.

"What do we have here?" O'Neill said, lifting the lid from one of the containers and peering inside before moving to the next one. "Looks like...soup, juice...Jell-O, uh...tea, which isn't a food," he added to Skaara. "Got a preference?"

Skaara blinked.

After a few moments of strained silence, O'Neill said, "You've never had Jell-O before, have you?" He picked up one of the small, round containers.

"Wait, O'Neill--" Skaara started.

"Don't worry, it's good--it's not anything like cows at all. Cows are...like mastadges, sort of."

"No, I--what?"

O'Neill scooped a spoonful of brightly-colored...something. He frowned at the cup and said, without looking up, "Your brother was grossed out at first when he found out we make this from cows and such, but he got over it. He liked the red kind--said it tasted like some drink you guys make on Abydos by putting...fruit in... To be honest, I wasn't paying attention," he admitted. "You know how he was."

Skaara stared at the spoonful. As he watched, it vibrated and wobbled disconcertingly. "This is...a food?"

"For today, it's probably the closest you'll get to real food," O'Neill told him. "C'mon, try it."

He reached out tentatively to take the spoon for himself, embarrassed when O'Neill's hand stayed on the spoon but thankful when his hand shook. The first bite was unexpectedly sweet--he started to chew automatically, but it turned into water in his mouth and slipped down his throat. "Oh," he said, unsure what to think of a drink that disguised itself as a food.

"You feel sick at all?" O'Neill asked, watching him closely. Skaara considered, then shook his head. "Give it a second." Skaara waited obediently for several seconds, then shook his head again. "Good. You need to get your strength back, and you're gonna need more than a spoonful of Jell-O to do that."

"Wait," Skaara said, holding up his hand. He started to sit up more, then stopped. "What happened?"

O'Neill looked back down at the tray, but not quickly enough to hide his wince. "You know," he said, "this is a discussion better suited for when you're not gonna fall asleep halfway --"

"No, what of Anubis?" he persisted. "I did not see the end of the fighting--"

"Anubis left Abydos and came here," O'Neill said. "And then he left here, too. You're safe. We're just...trying to figure out what to do next."

Skaara thought about that, but his mind was slow. "Then why are you here and not helping the Tau'ri?"

Shrugging, O'Neill said, "Teal'c and Major Carter are collecting news from the rebel Jaffa and the Tok'ra. Jonas Quinn's working on some translation I can't help with. Besides, it's nighttime now. I've got nothing to do."

"Dan'yel said he would come to help you after Anubis," Skaara said, confused, and then, "Where is my brother? Have you seen him again since...since then?"

O'Neill stared at him, becoming oddly still for a man who normally could not seem to stop moving. "No," he said calmly. "Then again, most of us went a year and a half without seeing him, and then he popped up out of the blue. Who knows?"

"Perhaps he is still on Abydos," Skaara said, uneasy. Belatedly, he remembered, "Have you told my people that Anubis is gone?"

Finally, O'Neill put down the cup of Jell-O and turned to Skaara seriously. "Don't think too hard about this, all right? Doesn't mean anything for sure. But...we can't...reach Abydos."

Skaara sat up straight despite the pain that flared. "_What?_"

"Hey, calm down," O'Neill said sharply, poking a finger into Skaara's chest. "Your people were evacuated, right? The Stargate was smack in the middle of the area. Chances are, it got damaged in the fight just after we arrived at the SGC, but that doesn't mean anything happened to the rest of Abydos or your people. Anubis got here so fast, he probably didn't have time to go rampaging around your planet."

"But we cannot go back?" he said.

"We're trying the 'gate every once in a while, but that looks like a no-go. We've also got a hold of the Tok'ra, and as soon as they can, they're gonna send a ship out there to take a look around. They're just...a little busy and very short-handed. We've gotta wait it out, that's all."

"We have to wait," Skaara echoed hollowly.

O'Neill sat back with a sigh. "Look, you're in no shape to travel, anyway--with some work, you'll probably be back on your feet by the time we get some news."

Skaara thought of what Klorel would have been able to do to Abydos with a _hatak_. To younger Goa'uld like Klorel--even to many of the System Lords--Anubis was no more than a myth. It had taken most of the forces of Ra, Cronus, Sokar, Yu, and any other Goa'uld they could find simply to banish him the first time. Skaara wondered if O'Neill was telling him the truth or deliberately making it seem less grave than it truly was.

"I must know what happened," Skaara said finally. "You are speaking of my home, O'Neill."

"Yeah," O'Neill said. "But it's a long story, and you're injured. You need to get some food in yourself, get some sleep, and I _promise_ I will tell you when you wake up. That's basically all I know yet, anyway."

_Now_, he wanted to demand, but there was nothing he could do now. Skaara knew that he was lucky to be alive, after the wound he had taken, and he knew that it would be difficult to recover fully. If he was to help, that was what he needed to do first. Besides...

"Dan'yel told me that you keep your word," Skaara said, remembering that brief, wonderful stretch of time when he had been able to sit on the floor of his house with his brother, talking of nothing and of life and of war, learning how to be brothers again and knowing that they would never be who they had been before Apophis's attack. "You will tell me? Everything?"

O'Neill's expression grew stiff, but he nodded. "Promise. And whatever happens--not that anything'll happen," he added quickly, "but in case...you know, if it takes a while for the Tok'ra to get back to us or something--we'll make sure you're taken care of. Daniel would kick our asses if we let anything happen to you."

"I trust you," Skaara said, and did not think about the fact that his brother had died to save SG-1--he very carefully remembered that his brother had been stubborn and, for all that he knew, might have lost himself again in the name of Abydos after losing himself once for Earth.

"Good man," O'Neill said, patting him gently on the shoulder. "Now eat your Jell-O."

When as much of the food as he could manage was gone and his eyes began to fall closed, he said, "Was Tobay here before?"

There was a long pause, and then, "No. You're the only one who got through the 'gate with us."

"I think I dreamed of him," Skaara mumbled. "Is he dead?"

"No," O'Neill said again. "Ascended. Remember? I think you saw it." A moment later, he added, his voice stiff and awkward, "I saw Daniel before. I was hurt pretty bad then, too. Maybe Tobay was...checking up on you the same way."

Skaara knew already that the knowledge that one's brother was Ascended and not dead was little comfort. Later, perhaps, it would help to know that they still lived on somewhere, but for now, he cared only that many of his brothers--men he had led into battle--were gone forever.

"You all right?" O'Neill said. Skaara nodded but didn't shake O'Neill's hand away as he let himself fall asleep.


	12. Part IV: The Lost, 2 of 4

**Part IV (cont'd) **

_**13 May 2003; SGC, Earth; 2200 hrs**_

The Ancients, Jonas thought, should have picked a phonetic system and stuck to it.

Well, that wasn't fair. He didn't actually expect languages and societies to stay static over time. It was just that Ancient, more than any other language the SGC cared about, was a constant guessing game. There was a longer gap between Ancient and the closest attested Earth equivalent than between most other languages, and, with Ayiana dead, there weren't any living people on Earth to ask about it.

The whole thing was rather discouraging. Jonas could remember things exactly--equations, conversations, idioms, vocabulary, grammatical exceptions, technical specifications--but this, with the Ancient tablet...

Daniel Jackson's notes on the tablet and the conclusions he'd drawn made sense--the way a puzzle made sense after someone else put the pieces together--but even after hammering out a bit more of the translation, Jonas still couldn't figure out what to do with the rest of the pieces.

Teal'c came in while Jonas was feeding the fish and hoping that their careless circuits around the tank would bring him some inspiration.

"I must be missing something," Jonas said, rubbing the back of his neck.

"You said that the dialect is very old," Teal'c offered. "What do you know thus far?"

"Well..." Jonas returned to his desk to look at his notes, "I know that there's a city that the Ancients built--Daniel Jackson translates it in his notes as the 'city of the lost'--and that there was a plague that killed most of the Ancients. Maybe the thing Ayiana had, remember?"

"Indeed," Teal'c said, scowling. Jonas winced. None of them liked remembering what had happened in the aftermath of that disease--Colonel O'Neill's implantation and subsequent capture by Ba'al was not a highlight of his time at the SGC.

"Anyway," he went on, "they Ascended to escape the plague. And..."

He stopped. _And...and..._something. Something about the plague and the city.

"What is it?" Teal'c said.

Jonas narrowed his eyes, trying to catch some thought that was eluding him. "I don't know," he said, shuffling back through a pile of notes and reports he'd set aside. "That reminded me of...I don't know. Maybe I read something once and it's registering in my mind somewhere..."

"I am certain the answer will come to you," Teal'c said.

"Yeah," Jonas said, frustrated, then forced himself to slow down and go back through the notes in order. "You think maybe they never finished the city?" he asked. "If there was that plague..."

Teal'c raised his chin, looking thoughtful. "It is possible," he said. "If it held great technology, perhaps they were building it to shelter themselves from a plague or defend themselves from an enemy who would have taken advantage of their weakened state."

"Maybe," Jonas said. "But the plague killed them first."

"Why do you think the city was not completed?" Teal'c said.

Frowning, Jonas flipped quickly through his notes and wondered if he'd simply imagined seeing that somewhere, because he couldn't find a reference to it now. "It just...sort of came to me." He sighed. "I don't know."

"Perhaps you should begin again tomorrow," Teal'c suggested, glancing pointedly at the clock. Jonas followed his gaze, surprised to find that hours had passed since he'd last looked up.

"Yeah. I'll think about this again in the morning. Any change with Abydos? I know Skaara's been getting restless."

"None yet. We received word from Tagrea, however--the _Prometheus_ will not be ready to return for months. The Tok'ra remain our only source of ships capable of interstellar travel."

Jonas nodded. "And anything from the Jaffa?"

"Anubis has recovered from his brief defeat," Teal'c said grimly.

"Anubis was beating them even before he really had his own army," Jonas said. "Even before anyone knew he was back. Losing one ship and the Eyes probably wasn't a setback so much as it was a...a lack of a step forward, right?"

Teal'c seemed to consider that for a while. "He is undoubtedly foremost among the Goa'uld."

"So how is this going to play out? Anubis knows the other System Lords turned on him, so is he going to keep his head down until he's strong enough that they can't defeat him easily all at once, or is he going to strike now before _they_ can recover?"

"He does not yet have the power to defeat them all at once," Teal'c said. "But I am certain that he will begin to attack the others one by one to ensure that they never become too strong."

"The others have four of the Eyes, though," Jonas pointed out.

"However, some of the Jaffa have spoken of strange behavior from Yu's forces."

"Strange how?" Jonas said.

"They say he is accusing other System Lords of crimes that never occurred," Teal'c said. "He spends much of his time near his homeworld, sequestering the other armies under his command there as well. There is talk that the other Goa'uld are planning to replace him, or to steal the Eyes that he holds."

"I don't understand," Jonas said. "Yu has been the most reasonable Goa'uld I've heard of, and now, he's...what, going mad?"

"I do not know," Teal'c said. "But it has begun to sow more dissent between the other System Lords at a time when we need them to ally against Anubis. Unless," he added, "we find the city of the lost and defeat Anubis ourselves."

"If things continue as they have been, Anubis's victory is only a matter of time," Jonas guessed.

"Perhaps," Teal'c said, reluctantly, in the tone that really meant 'indeed.' "I believe he may bide his time until the other System Lords have resolved their current disputes."

"Let's hope so," Jonas said. Hopefully, by then, they would have a miraculous plan to defeat the System Lords--a massive strike using some derivative of the symbiote poison, maybe, once they found a way not to kill Jaffa. Actually, speaking of that... "How...uh...have you been talking to other Jaffa about tretonin, too?"

Teal'c's entire body tensed. "They know of its existence," he said, almost calmly, but Jonas knew enough about body language to know that his friend wanted him to shut up.

"Oh," Jonas said, uncertain of how much to push. He knew Teal'c had had trouble adjusting to the new drug, but he didn't know how to ask about it, or even if it was all right to ask whether the problem was more physical or mental. "So, you..." He tried to find the right way to phrase it and settled on, "You and Dr. Fraiser have found the right dosage for you by now, right?"

"We have," Teal'c said. This time, he added a scowl whose meaning was unmistakable.

Jonas made a face. "Right. Okay. You should get some rest--"

Teal'c's glare turned to ice.

Swallowing, Jonas added, "--and so should I. There's still a lot to do in the morning."

Finally, Teal'c relented a little and turned away. "Indeed," he said.

"Teal'c, you know...if there's anything--"

"There is not, Jonas Quinn," Teal'c said.

Jonas sighed. "Okay," he answered unhappily. "Good night."

Teal'c nodded once and left. Jonas made his way to the office door and peeked out to see Teal'c touch his abdomen where the symbiote pouch had once been before he walked out of sight.

...x...

_**17 May 2003; Major Carter's Lab, SGC; 0700 hrs**_

"You're here early," Jonas said when he saw Sam already in her lab.

She glanced away from her laptop, waving him in. "I just can't shake the idea something's going to go horribly wrong. You know, what with the fleet of motherships in our orbit a couple weeks ago."

Jonas made a face. "At least you're staying cheerful," he said. She rolled her eyes, but it made her smile, too. "Can I ask you a question?"

"Sure," she said, not looking up from her work.

"It's about Ra," he added, taking a seat.

"I'm probably not the best person here to ask about Ra," she said. "I wasn't exactly present at the Abydonian Great Rebellion. Colonel O'Neill or Teal'c--"

"Not about him _personally_," Jonas said. "Ra was the most powerful System Lord until he was defeated, right? He must've been a powerful symbol for the Tok'ra to use him in their name."

"As far as we know, he was one of the bigger ones," she said, nodding. "At least in this part of the galaxy, although it's possible other parts were dominated by...by Lord Yu, for example."

"But Ra still didn't know what the Ancient tablet said."

She folded her hands on her desk, looking thoughtful. "Well, he could have, I guess. Teal'c says he hasn't heard about anything like a lost city, so if Ra did know anything about it--"

"And we have to assume he would've looked for it if he'd been able to read it," he added.

"--then he kept it pretty quiet," Sam finished. "That's par for the course for powerful Goa'uld, though; it was kept in a secret chamber, after all."

"How much do the Goa'uld know about the Ancients, anyway?" Jonas asked. "How much would someone like Ra have known?"

"It's hard to say," she said. She closed her laptop, turning her attention fully to the question. "But if they knew a lot, they'd probably be using more Ancient technology."

"Maybe they didn't understand it enough to capitalize on it," he suggested. "Maybe that's why Anubis's technology seems so different--he's half-Ascended and probably picked up a lot from the Others--Ascended Ancients."

"You're right--I bet that's what Khonsu had noticed and was going to tell us before Herak killed him," Sam said, wincing. "But it could be even be simpler than that. Most of the 'gate addresses in the Ancient database are not in the Abydos cartouche data, and we've rarely found traces of the Ancients except on addresses from the Ancient database; in fact, the only definitive present connection we know of between them is that the Goa'uld didn't dare to go to Kheb. Maybe the Goa'uld were never really exposed to the Ancients except on the battlefield."

"The battlefield?" Jonas asked, and then answered his own question. "Right. When Colonel O'Neill had that repository of knowledge in his head, the Asgard told him the Ancients used to be one of the four races fighting the Goa'uld. But...hold on, when did the Goa'uld first start taking hosts?"

"Our best estimates put Ra's first contact with Earth about ten thousand years ago, give or take, but there were Goa'uld regularly using other-than-human hosts for...ten, even twenty-five thousand years before that. But that's just a rough estimate based on some very fuzzy translations of Unas oral history."

"Sometime in the last forty thousand years," he summarized. "Less than a hundred thousand."

"That's the right order of magnitude, yes."

"So how did they ever meet the Ancients," Jonas said, holding up his translation notes, "who Ascended about five _million_ years ago?"

Sam chewed on her lip, thinking, then said, "Well...it's possible the Ancients themselves weren't part of that war, but they left technology or knowledge that were used to fight the Goa'uld."

"Okay, that's reasonable," he said, making a mental note to review intergalactic history when he had some free time. "So where did Ra get that tablet?"

"Could've been anywhere," she said, shrugging. "We've found abandoned technology lying around, and _we_ haven't spent thousands of years exploring. Ra might have just picked the tablet up somewhere, whether or not the Ancients had already Ascended by that time--in fact, it could explain how little the Goa'uld seem to know about them, other than the basics. The other three races of the alliance would've tried to keep Ancient knowledge out of Goa'uld hands."

"Like leaving Ancient knowledge in databases mounted on walls," Jonas said, and then, "Huh." Something jangled in his mind again, but he still couldn't quite catch what he was looking for.

"What?" she said.

"I don't know," he said. "Can you say all of that again?"

Giving him an odd look, Sam said, "Uh...not word for word."

"Ancient database," he said, thinking backward. "The alliance of the four races...which were Asgard, Ancient, Nox, Furling. The Asgard...no. Wait, yes, Colonel O'Neill found out when the Asgard took the database out of his head, because it was programming his brain to do...things..."

The answer fell into place.

"That's it," he said, standing up. "He...and the Ancient repository of knowledge--that's _it_!"

"What's it?" she said cautiously.

Excited, Jonas explained, "The city! It's the city of the lost! We don't know the 'gate address!"

"Right," Sam said. "Yeah."

"No, no--we don't need it," he said. It was only when he was at the door that he realized she wasn't beside him. "Sam, c'mon!"

Wearing a bemused smile, she said, "Jonas, what are you talking about?"

"Come on!" he repeated, and ran out the door toward the general's office.

XXXXX

_**17 May 2003; SGC, Earth; 0745 hrs**_

"So," Jack said as he walked Skaara slowly toward the infirmary, "anything fun planned today?"

"I do not know," Skaara said, not quite managing to walk casually as he manfully pretended he didn't have a hole healing in his stomach. "It is...a bit boring."

"Dr. Fraiser thinks you can step up your physical therapy soon," Jack offered. "So the good news is it won't be as boring as sitting in a bed all day; the bad news is it'll hurt a lot more."

Actually, the good news was that Skaara wasn't going to be crippled for life, and that there was a 'life' involved in the equation. That staff blast had done a lot of damage, and he might not ever be quite as strong as he had been, but Jack was just glad the kid was on his feet.

Skaara made a face. "I know," he said. "Have you heard from the Tok'ra about Abydos?"

"You know, funny you should ask..." Jack said, then held up a hand when Skaara looked up with wide eyes. "Now, hold on. They've got someone on a mission who _might_ be wrapping things up soon. _If_ he finishes as planned and _if_ he gets away in a ship with a working hyperdrive, they'll have him swing by Abydos and take a look around. It might be a couple of days; it might be a couple of weeks or even more if things go pear-shaped on the Tok'ra's mission."

Skaara swallowed, but nodded. "Will you come with me when I return to Abydos?"

"Well, sure," Jack said, smiling in what he hoped was an optimistic way. "I said I'd go to your wedding, didn't I? I want to meet this girl of yours."

He earned a grin for that. None of them mentioned the other possibility: that Skaara's fiancée, his father, his sister, his friends, and everyone else might not have made it through. Their own curiosity aside, they _had_ to go with Skaara so that someone could bring him back to Earth if it turned out something was wrong on Abydos.

"Maybe Dan'yel will be there," Skaara said wistfully, as if he didn't know that if Daniel had been on Abydos all this time, he could have been here on Earth, too. Ascended people didn't need functioning Stargates to zip around.

"Are you trying to replace me as best man?" Jack said.

Skaara laughed and rolled his eyes, and as selfish as it might be, Jack couldn't help wishing just a little bit that he were walking and talking with someone else instead. He had no doubt Skaara felt the same.

"Colonel O'Neill?" an airman said just as they reached the infirmary. "You're needed in the briefing room, sir."

Skaara looked up at him, looking torn between trepidation and anticipation, so Jack made sure he showed neither on his face as he said, "All right, Skaara, here's your stop. Take it easy, you hear?" He caught an nurse's eye, tilting his head toward the still-unsteady Skaara.

"I will, I will," Skaara grumbled obligingly. Jack started off, but glanced back in time to see his worried face still watching from around the doorframe until he was firmly ushered to a bed.

Hammond, Carter, and Jonas were already in the briefing room when Jack arrived. Before he could open his mouth to ask what was going on, Jonas turned to him with a rather maniacal grin and said, "I got it!"

"Hope it's not contagious," Jack said automatically, and realized it wasn't about the Tok'ra mission or a ship at all.

Jonas paused, then said, "That--that's a good one, sir."

"What has happened?" Teal'c said as he hurried up the stairs.

"Jonas thinks he knows where the city of the lost is," Carter said.

"The city of the what?" Jack said.

"The city on the Ancient tablet," Jonas explained excitedly. "Now. I couldn't figure out how the tablet was supposed to help us, because all it seemed to be was a...a history of sorts. And I couldn't figure out why something would be called 'city of the lost,' but I realized: they were building some great city and then they started getting infected with a plague before the city could be finished."

"Okay," Jack said. "Do we know where this city is?"

"No...but I know how to find it," he insisted. "Colonel, you put a lot of 'gate addresses into the dialing computer when you had the Ancient database in your head."

"Apparently," Jack said. "And?"

"And we haven't seen nearly all of them, even with probes," Jonas went on. "But if they were building some great, central city when they all died or Ascended, wouldn't it stand to reason that it might be the last address on the list?"

Jack stared at him, then looked at Carter and Teal'c. "Wouldn't we have thought of that?" he asked. It sounded too simple not to have thought of it. Then again, it also sounded _too simple_. The one thing he knew about the Ancients was that _nothing_ was simple with them.

"Well...no, sir," Carter said. "We _didn't_ think of it."

"Did you not say the Ancients were killed by a plague while building this city?" Teal'c said.

"Yeah, why do you say that again?" Carter said, setting her hands on her hips.

"Because...because...well, we know they ended up being killed by a plague, and I think this might have been their last city," Jonas said, frowning. As Jack tried to decide whether that was circular logic and where it actually connected, Jonas added, "Colonel, I realize it's not hard evidence, but I think this is worth a shot."

Carter shrugged. "It wouldn't hurt to look, sir."

"Okay...but I also seem to remember being almost killed the last time we found an Ancient with the plague," Jack said, barely stopping a shudder as he remembered Kanan and Ba'al.

"Actually, we might be okay there," Carter said. "The pathogen Ayiana carried was presumably preserved in her body. Otherwise, after such a long time and with no living hosts, I suspect the disease wouldn't have lasted. After all, the Ancients of P4X-639 were killed by a plague thousands of years ago--maybe the same one--but we were perfectly fine there."

Jack racked his brain for P4X-639. "The planet that caused the time loop," Teal'c told him.

"Ah," Jack said. "So...possibly dangerous Ancient technology, but not Ancient diseases."

"Probably," Jonas said. "We're _hoping_ for dangerous Ancient technology, aren't we?"

"Okay," Jack conceded. "But I thought you said I didn't finish putting the addresses in after the whole...head-sucker thing."

"To be honest, sir," Carter said, "we don't know. You might have, and even if it turns out not to be the right place...well, Ancient planets that aren't listed in the Abydos cartouche _are_ a good place to start looking for more clues."

"If I'm right about the order of the planets, starting at the end will at least give us more of a chance that we'll find references to the very last planet," Jonas pointed out. "Or a direct link from there to the city of the lost. Sir, I don't know if there's much more I can do from here."

"The coordinates are already being recalculated," Hammond said. "If the MALP doesn't detect any immediate threat, you'll check it out. Take SG-3 and -5 with you."

...x...

_**17 May 2003; Village, P4T-3G6 (Vis Uban); 1500 hrs**_

The people they met spoke Egyptian, more or less. Actually, they spoke quite a few things, including a bit of some very old-sounding English that was all but incompatible with Tau'ri English. They were travelers, they said--Jonas called them nomads--and had met many people of many cultures, just as SG-1 did themselves.

And then, the man who had greeted them--Khordib--returned with an old man called Shamda, who gave them all a vaguely suspicious look and said something that Teal'c translated as, "No one can be a friend if you know not whether to trust them."

"_You should not judge a book by its...first...page_," Jack retorted in what he felt was passable Abydonian.

A glint appeared in Shamda's eye. He straightened and countered, "_The promises of one's enemies are made to be broken_."

Carter ducked her head, looking bemused, but how often did Jack get to play any sort of intellectual patty cake off-world? Rising to the challenge, he said, "_But honesty is still best_."

"_He who has too many friends has none_," Shamda answered swiftly.

"Ah," Jack said, raising a finger, "_but birds...uh...that have feathers that look...the same_..."

Shamda tilted his head, squinting interestedly. "_I am unfamiliar with that story. What lesson does it teach?_"

Uh... "_It's about...groups_," Jack said. "_Being...in a group. And...I don't know it well myself_," he said, surrendering what would otherwise turn into a linguistic struggle too complicated for him to get out in favor of turning the conversation around. "_But we are not your enemies. If you give us a chance, we can prove it._"

"Colonel!"

Jack turned to see Colonel Reynolds and his team walking toward SG-1. He tensed slightly, but aside from the fact that the man wasn't assessing the site and the perimeter as he'd been ordered to do, all of SG-3 looked more excited than anxious.

"We found something you might want to see," Reynolds said.

_Weapon_, Jack thought first. _Maybe an Ancient stronghold_.

But instead, there was a regular person following them, wearing a faded blue robe in the style of all of Shamda's people and looking a lot like--

Jack's thoughts ground to a halt.

A familiar face looked up at him, a familiar blue gaze roving over all of them in that familiar way. "Daniel?" Jack heard himself say.

"Arrom," Khordib corrected, but Jack wasn't listening anymore.

Daniel was watching all of them curiously. Jack opened his mouth to ask very loudly where the _hell_ he'd been for the last few weeks and _why_ the hell he hadn't at least _contacted_ the SGC to tell them he was okay and was, by the way, sitting around in the Ancient city of the lost...

But then Daniel shifted his feet, and Jack noticed a light puff of dry dirt rising from under his sandal to settle gently on Daniel's rather dusty toes, and all Jack could think was that people who were made of energy and were immaterial weren't supposed to get dusty but Daniel was, so he was real and _solid_ this time, and the only thing that came out of his mouth was, "What?"

"_It is what we call him,_" Khordib said. It took Jack a minute to realize he meant 'Arrom.'

"_It means 'naked one'_," Shamda added.

"_We found him naked in the forest, a short time ago,_" Kordib said.

So why had Daniel been walking around naked in a forest, and why was he going by another name?

The sudden, sickening thought occurred that Jack could be imagining all of this. So soon after that disaster on Abydos, maybe Jack's mind was playing tricks on him and he was just seeing Daniel's features on some stranger.

Then the new arrival lowered his eyebrows the way only Daniel could do, the way that meant _I'm-confused_ and _I'm-waiting-why-aren't-you-talking_ and _hold-on-wait-I'm-thinking_. He folded his arms over his chest, looking for all the world like he had when he'd been about a foot shorter than he was now, back when...

When he hadn't recognized anything around him.

Daniel's gaze met Jack's again and moved away, like Jack was part of the surroundings and not the person who knew him best in the entire universe, so Jack _knew_, even before Reynolds said, "He doesn't seem to remember anything. I'm not sure he even understands English."

Annoyance flitted across Daniel's face. "I saw that," Jack said immediately, pointing an accusatory finger at him. "You do understand us. What is this, some sort of game?"

The annoyance became confusion, not recognition. "_Who are you?_" Daniel said, in Abydonian.

By habit, Jonas started to answer in the same language, "_We are--_"

"No," Jack interrupted sharply. "He's our translator. He doesn't need a translation." Jonas shut up.

Carter stepped forward. "Daniel, it's okay," she said, reaching toward him. "It's me, Sam--" Daniel's hand blocked hers before she could make contact. She pulled back slowly.

"Do you not recognize us, Daniel Jackson?" Teal'c tried.

In answer, Daniel backed away two steps, his expression wary, then walked quickly past all of them. Jack watched him go until he ducked into a tent.

"_Do you truly know who he is?_" Khordib said, calling Jack's attention back.

Jack opened his mouth, but apparently his mouth was being as stubbornly disobedient today as Daniel on a bad day, and nothing came out. Carter was looking at her hand, as though she wasn't sure whether to feel more hurt or astonished that she'd actually touched him. "_Yes_," Teal'c said quietly when neither of them answered. "_We thought him lost forever._"

"_You say he 'appeared?'_" Jonas asked. "_No one knows where he came from?_"

Shamda shook his head. "_No one--not even Arrom himself._" He cocked his head to the side, looking all of them over. "_If what you say is true...you cannot think this meeting happened purely by chance?_"

That was a good point. "No, we don't think that," Jack said, and broke away from the group, striding toward the tent where Daniel had disappeared.

When Jack ducked down to see into the entrance, Daniel looked up, startled. "_Leave me alone_," he said, still sticking stubbornly to Abydonian.

Jack ignored him and stepped inside, letting the edge of the canvas drop again behind him. "I know you know what I'm saying," Jack said. Daniel didn't move from where he was sitting on a pallet, but he glanced up again, briefly. "Think about that, Daniel. Even you can't know an entire language the first time you hear it. What do you think that means, huh?"

Daniel twisted his hands together, sitting even more stiffly than before, his eyes following as Jack sat down on opposite him. Finally, he said, "Dan..." He paused to clear his throat. "Daniel?"

_Amnesia_, Jack firmly reminded himself. _Be patient_. "Your name is Daniel Jackson. You were born in the village of Nagada on the planet Abydos. You're officially a foreign volunteer serving with the SGC on Earth. Unofficially, we picked you up once and just never got rid of you." He waited for that flicker of recognition, but nothing happened. "I'm Jack O'Neill, commander of SG-1. Until about a year ago, you were part of my unit. Any of this sound familiar?"

No answer.

"You were--_are_ a friend of ours," Jack went on. "You died about a year ago--well, no," he amended when Daniel's eyes flicked up and said, _Yeah, right_. "You just..._sort_ of died. Actually, you...Ascended to another level of existence. The last time we saw you, you convinced us to help you fight Anubis and then had to try to save our asses."

This time, Daniel glanced at the gun still clipped to Jack's chest and pursed his lips skeptically.

"Don't ask me why you could do some stuff and not others," Jack said. "Pissed me off, too. Anyway, since then you've obviously retaken human form somehow..."

Daniel raised his eyebrows.

"I can see how this might sound a bit unusual," Jack said. Daniel didn't answer. Impatient, Jack said, "Look, I'm not just gonna sit here talking to myself."

Daniel tilted his head and looked back at him pointedly. _I didn't ask you to come_, Jack read in his expression. _You could go away._

"C'mon--say something," Jack said.

Daniel said something in his native language far too fast for Jack to understand. If the complete amnesia hadn't been obvious, Jack would have suspected him of having said it that way on purpose, just to annoy him.

"I meant in English," Jack said. "If you're gonna speak in Abydonian, you'll have to slow down."

"Jackson," Daniel said.

"That's you," Jack said warily.

Daniel pointed to him and said, "Jack."

"And that's me."

"Jack...son?" he said, pointing his finger between the two of them.

"No," Jack said quickly, realizing what the question was, not even calling Daniel on the fact that obviously he knew the word 'son' and could probably explain the roots of his own name; correcting the misunderstanding took precedence. That seemed to confuse Daniel even more, though. "It's just a name. They _really_ wouldn't've let me be your commanding officer if you'd been my son."

"Commanding officer," Daniel repeated blankly, his eyebrows drawn low. He didn't say it like someone repeating meaningless foreign sounds--he _knew_ what the words meant and wasn't admitting it, maybe still puzzling over it himself.

"Look," Jack said, "don't you at least want to know who you are?"

Instead of answering him, Daniel looked at the ground. Jack waited a full minute--okay, it was at least ten seconds--for him to say something, but he didn't. "Daniel--"

"Arrom," Daniel said quietly.

"Daniel," Jack insisted.

_Jack_, Daniel didn't say.

XXXXX

_**18 May 2003; Village, P4T-3G6 (Vis Uban); 1600 hrs**_

Teal'c stopped at the entrance to Daniel Jackson's tent and watched him light one candle using the flame from another. He moved in the same way--he even tilted his head the same way, watching a thin line of smoke rise until the wick caught fire. He remembered, Teal'c thought; perhaps he simply did not know that he remembered.

"May I enter?" Teal'c said in the Egyptian language, suspecting that it would feel more comfortable and less alien at the moment--O'Neill and Major Carter both said that Daniel Jackson would not speak to them in English.

Daniel Jackson's head turned to look at him. His eyes lingered on the tattoo on Teal'c's forehead, but his expression was one of curiosity, not of recognition or even fear. "You know me also?" he said in his own tongue.

"I know you very well. I am your friend, called Teal'c."

"Do you not have many names like the others?" Daniel Jackson said.

Teal'c smiled, remembering another conversation like this that they had had, though it had been in reverse that time. "I do not," he said, resisting the urge to step forward and sit, as they had done so many times before. Caution was needed now.

When he remained outside, Daniel Jackson said, almost as a question, "Jim didn't wait for my permission to come in."

Teal'c felt his smile falter. "Perhaps you mean to say 'Jack?'"

"Jack," Daniel Jackson repeated, furrowing his brow. "The man who was here earlier--?"

"Jack," Teal'c said firmly. "Jack O'Neill."

"Did I know someone else called Jim?"

"It is possible," Teal'c said. "You knew and worked with a great many people." Daniel nodded faintly but still did not seem to understand. "If Colonel O'Neill--Jack--did not ask your permission, that is because he is accustomed to overlooking some courtesies with you. The two of you were very close."

Daniel Jackson nodded slowly. "You may enter," he added.

"Thank you," Teal'c said as he bent and ducked inside.

"But I don't know what you want from me," Daniel Jackson said.

"Only to allow us to help you," Teal'c said, lowering himself into a seat. "I know that my friend would have wanted us to help him if ever he forgot who he was."

"Then my wishes don't matter?" he answered. "Only his?"

Teal'c paused. He had not thought of it in such a way. "You are not two different people," he pointed out. "Part of you is simply hidden from your own mind. Do you truly wish not to remember all those years of your life?"

"Perhaps I don't like who I was," Daniel Jackson said.

Something about the words made Teal'c suspicious. "Have you remembered something?"

"No," Daniel Jackson lied, because he did not remember that he could never lie to Teal'c.

"A name?" Teal'c prompted. "An image? Perhaps in a dream?"

"No!" he repeated, and then, the words directed toward the ground, "I don't know. I couldn't remember when I woke up, but it...bothered me at the time."

"It will always be so until you know what happened and why," Teal'c said, curious about what kind of thing Daniel Jackson had remembered on his own, even in a dream, but asking now would only distance them further. "I told you once before that you should not allow fear of what you could be to impede the good person that you are."

Biting his lip, Daniel Jackson looked up from under his eyebrows, considering. "I don't know what to say to that," he finally said.

"If you try to remember," Teal'c said, "perhaps you will understand."

"These people have been very kind to me. This place is all I know."

"But it is not," Teal'c countered. "You know much more. Before we lost you, the SGC valued you greatly for your knowledge and your intellect. It was with the help of records you left that we were able to find this planet."

"I left records to tell you where to find me...and then forgot that I would be here myself," he said, looking confused.

"Perhaps you did not know this would happen to you," Teal'c said. "But I cannot believe it was solely chance that brought us to this planet such a short time after you were found here."

"Then what do you think it was?" Daniel Jackson said.

Teal'c had not asked Jonas Quinn whether the inspiration to search this planet had been his own and suspected he would not have been able to say for certain in any case. "That remains unclear," Teal'c admitted. "But there must be a connection. While we were preparing to fight Anubis, you told us of this place where we could find great treasures--we believed we would find devices here to help us in our war."

"What devices?" Daniel Jackson said, looking interested--looking like himself--for the first time. "Who is Anubis?"

Teal'c stood. "Perhaps you would like to rejoin us and find out," he invited, moving toward the tent flap.

Daniel Jackson was quiet for a minute. "You are trying to trick me into joining you," he accused.

"It was you who asked the questions," Teal'c pointed out. "I only answered them. My friend, I would not force any choice upon you, but I also do not believe you will choose ignorance for fear of knowledge."

Before he could leave, Daniel Jackson said, "Teal'c, was I happy there?"

It pained Teal'c that he could not say 'yes' as simply as he wished he could, and yet, neither could he lie to lure Daniel Jackson to Earth. "You were loved by many," Teal'c finally said. "You have shared good times with us, and you truly believed that what we did was important."

"You do not say 'yes,'" Daniel Jackson observed.

"Would you hide from the truth because it displeases you?" Teal'c asked. This seemed to surprise Daniel Jackson into silence again. "We are likely to remain on this planet for some time," he added. "I ask that you consider returning home with us. Come to us when you wish."

...x...

O'Neill was waiting impatiently outside the tent. "He talked?" he said when Teal'c approached. "I saw talking going on."

"Indeed," Teal'c said.

"Well?"

"He will come with us."

"Really?" O'Neill said, hope lighting his expression. "He said that?"

"He did not," Teal'c said. "Nonetheless, I am certain."

This did not seem to be nearly enough for O'Neill, who scowled at the ground. "If Oma was the one who did this..." he started, warning in his tone.

"Daniel Jackson is alive," Teal'c reminded him. Only a day ago, that would have been more than any of them would have ever asked for. "Perhaps we have Oma Desala to thank."

"Yeah," O'Neill said, but before they could go on, Major Carter returned with Jonas Quinn.

"We, uh...we sent up a UAV," Jonas Quinn said. "But it'll take weeks for us to scour this place properly."

"What about Daniel?" Major Carter asked worriedly.

From behind them, Daniel Jackson said, "He is going home."

Teal'c turned around to see him step out from under the tent, adjusting a simple bag over his shoulder. For a long moment, no one spoke, and the determined expression on Daniel Jackson's face faded slowly into uncertainty. "No?" he asked.

"Yes," O'Neill said immediately, emphatically. "Yes. Home. God, Daniel, you really had us worried there for a second."

"Worried...where?" Daniel Jackson said.

His speech was oddly careful for someone who usually spoke too much rather than too little and O'Neill stared at him doubtfully, but Major Carter seemed relieved. Teal'c thought that teaching Daniel Jackson Tau'ri turns of speech again was a small price to pay for having him back. "Never mind," O'Neill said, looking unnerved.

"Will I learn what the...the devices are?" Daniel Jackson said eagerly, looking around himself.

"What?" Major Carter said.

"I believe you must relearn other things first, Daniel Jackson," Teal'c said. "We will have much time on this planet to see what is here."

"One step at a time," Jonas Quinn said, almost managing to sound more cheerful than awkward.

XXXXX

_**18 May 2003; SGC, Earth; 1800 hrs**_

Arrom-who-was-Daniel Jackson looked down at himself when he felt his foot land on a hard, cold surface instead of the sand he had been expecting. When he stopped, the person behind him--Major Samantha Carter whom he called Sam--placed a hand on his back and pushed gently. Daniel lifted one foot and took a step, then lifted the other and took another step, and by then, the fascinating view before him had caught his attention.

He had hoped that seeing things that he was supposed to know would remind him and that he would suddenly remember. Now, it felt as though he _would_ understand if he could simply reach a little further, but every time he tried to catch some memory lingering just out of reach, it disappeared.

"Welcome back, Mr. Jackson," said a man at the bottom of the ramp. Jonas had talked nearly the whole time while they had walked back to the Stargate, perhaps because no one else to know what to say, so Daniel knew that this must be General Hammond.

It took the sharp noise of someone's cough before he remembered that he was Jackson. It took him another moment to remember that he did not need to be frightened of the fact that he knew this language without remembering that he knew it. "Thank you," Daniel said carefully, but the words tumbled easily from his lips, so he tried again. "Thank you very much."

There was a man beside the one who had spoken, this one with long, black hair and a face that was beaming delightedly. "We did not think to see you again, brother," the man said.

Daniel narrowed his eyes, trying to bring the man's features into sharper focus. "Am I Brother?" he asked hesitantly. A second later, he remembered what the word 'brother' meant.

He looked in question at the man next to him--Jack? Jim? he could not remember which--who made a face that looked embarrassed and disappointed and almost angry, the same way that he had sounded angry before, even as he insisted that he was a good friend. Daniel did not understand what this meant.

"You have no memory of us?" Hammond asked.

Daniel shook his head. "No. I don't remember."

He looked back at the brother he did not know, standing at the bottom of the ramp, who suddenly did not look much older than Daniel assumed himself to be. Daniel looked at Jim-Jack-Colonel-O'Neill, who was giving the young man a commiserating look. Daniel wished he knew what he was supposed to do.

"This way," Sam said, touching him on the arm. Daniel turned readily away from the unhappy expressions he knew he was at fault for putting on several faces and followed her gentle tug, leading him away from the room and into a long corridor outside.

"I'm sorry," he said, not completely sure what he was sorry for. He looked over his shoulder, but the others did not seem to be following.

"It's okay; they're just briefing the general," Sam said, still walking. He realized he was lagging behind in his attempts to see everything and hurried to catch up. "Were you hurt when they found you?" she said abruptly.

"Hurt?" Daniel repeated. "I do not--I don't think so."

"Hm," she said, turning her head slightly to frown at him. "Have you had headaches? Anything unusual in... I mean, is it harder to do certain things, or bring some kinds of thoughts to mind? Not just memories, but everyday things."

He puzzled over her questions, then said, "You think that my brain was injured. That's why I remember nothing?"

"Well..." she hedged, and for a moment, he nearly stopped breathing with horror at the idea. "No, not necessarily."

"But it is possible?"

"Look," she said, offering a small, forced smile, "you were badly injured when you Ascended, but since you're not anymore, there's no reason to think you're hurt at all. Maybe there's another explanation--we already have a few ideas. It'll just be nice to be able to rule out some things."

"Oh," Daniel said.

"In fact, do you have a scar on...um, let's see...on your leg?" she said.

Daniel pulled his robe high enough to see his leg. "No."

Sam bent and pointed to his other leg with her finger, where there was a thin, faint line that ran messily from his knee and halfway down to his ankle. "I meant this one. And see? Yeah, you do. I noticed it in the ready room once."

"_I_ never noticed," he said, unnerved by the fact that she knew his body better than he did.

"You said you got the scar horsing around as a kid," she explained. "Fell into a pile of rocks, I think. Your brother might know exactly how it happened."

Brother. There it was again. He had a brother he didn't know, even when faced with him. "What does that mean?" he asked. He let go of his robe and placed his hand on the wall beside him instead, trailing his fingers over the rock-like surface of the walls.

_Concrete_, he thought, although he couldn't have said what was so concrete about any of it. The wall was very steady, though. Daniel knocked tentatively on it with a fist, then ran his fingers over it to feel the texture--it was like fine sand, the roughness even and controlled in a way that was nearly impossible in walls cut from stone. It had somehow been molded, perhaps, like clay, and then coated with something that dulled the roughness and made it a single color.

Sam was waiting, so he stopped exploring the wall and hurried to catch up to her. "I'm not sure, except that Dr. Fraiser's going to need to examine you to find out exactly what condition you're in," she said. "I spoke to her before we all came back, so she'll be expecting you--she's going to have you sit through some neural scans, too, for completion."

"Scans?" he echoed. "Who is Dr. Fraiser?"

Sam bit her lip. "Um. She's...a friend, too. Our chief medical officer. And she's going to...use machines to take a look inside your head so that--no, no, it's perfectly safe," she said quickly when he felt his eyes widen. "You'll be awake the whole time, and you won't feel a thing. People here do these things all the time--in fact, you've had brain scans before, too, pretty regularly. It's just to see if there's anything we can do to help you remember."

"Oh," Daniel said.

"We've got cat and pet facilities here on base," she said, and before he could figure out why she was suddenly talking about animals, she went on, "At some point, Janet will probably want the full spectrum of what we can see of everything in your body, but for now, she's going to start with an emar eye, maybe coupled with pet. We've got a high resolution ephemer rye, too, but--"

"What--wait--what?" he interrupted, unable to pretend anymore that he had any idea what she was saying. "Ephemer rye?"

"Yeah," Sam said, nodding.

"I don't know those words," Daniel said, feeling embarrassed. "Or..._that_ word? Is it one word?"

Her brow furrowed before she quickly smoothed her features and said, more slowly, "Oh. You. They're letters. M...R...I. And fMRI. It's a way to image...the inside of your body. Dr. Fraiser is going to want an _'MRI'_ of your brain to start with, and then we'll try other modalities."

"Like cats," he said.

"Uh, not exactly," Sam said, and bit her lip. A moment later she said, "That's a kind of scan, too. Nothing to do with cats."

He bit his lip. That still didn't tell him what any of that meant, only that it wasn't about animals. "How does...MRI see inside my body?"

"Magnets," she said. "But, uh, maybe we should wait if you want a more detailed explanation."

"I wouldn't understand, yes?"

She glanced at him, then away. "It's...a little complicated without the background. But don't worry about it. She'll explain as you go."

"Go? Am I going somewhere?" Daniel said.

Sam sighed. "That's just an expression, Daniel. She'll explain...while she works."

He swallowed, sensing her impatience, even though she was careful not to show it. Sam Carter was all anticipation and expectation he didn't know how to fill, and it felt like he was killing her friend all over again every time he didn't understand what she expected him to. "Oh," he said. "Did Daniel--did I understand all of that before?"

"Probably not the physics behind it, but yeah, you knew the general idea. It's not hard to pick up when you're around it all the time."

The corridor was very long. He wondered if he had always thought the corridor was so long or if it only seemed long now, because he didn't know where it went.

"What is it?" Sam said.

"What?" Daniel said, and it came out too quiet. The walls were coming closer. He reached out to touch them and discovered that it was only his imagination that made them seem that way.

"You stopped," she said.

"Did I?" he said. He looked down and noticed that his feet were not moving.

Looking so hopeful that he what she must be thinking and that she would be disappointed by his answer, she said, "Did you remember something?"

"No," he said. "Could we stop talking, please?"

She stared at him, then shook her head and gestured for him to continue walking with her. "Yeah--yeah. I'm sorry. I'm overloading you, aren't I? I've just been thinking about this ever since we found you. There has to be some explanation..." She trailed off. "Anyway."

"Okay," he said, but he found it was less of a relief than he had expected, because now _he_ was thinking about all of those things, and he wanted to know, too.


	13. Part IV: The Lost, 3 of 4

**Part IV (cont'd)**

Janet Fraiser was a small woman who wore white robes and whom everyone seemed to obey. Daniel wondered if the robes or their color was a sign of the respect she was afforded. She even made Sam go away, for which Daniel was grateful until he began feeling guilty for feeling grateful.

"Later, I'd like to run some neurological tests, if that's all right with you," Janet said.

"Yes. Sam told me."

"You're actually very close friends, you know," Janet said.

"I know that she's trying very hard," he said. "I don't know how to...to answer."

"Ah," Janet said, and tactfully dropped the subject. Daniel sat on the side of a bed and held very still as she wrapped something around his arm and tightened it. He couldn't quite remember what the device was called. He tried very hard to remember that much, because it would mean..._something_ if he could remember that. "For now, we're just going through some mundane things. Okay?"

"Sphygmomanometer," he said triumphantly. She froze. "You, uh, let all the air out," he said, watching a needle turn to zero on a small gauge as the band around his arm loosened. He suppressed the urge to grab the bulb and squeeze it himself, just to watch it work.

"Ah...sorry," she said, and squeezed the bulb to make the cuff tighten again. She finished quickly and took the cuff off before saying, "That's quite a word for an amnesiac to remember."

"If I didn't remember words, I wouldn't be talking to you now," he pointed out.

"Very true," she said, smiling at him. "Can I ask you a question?"

Daniel expected the question to follow directly, but she was actually waiting for permission to go on. Courtesies among these people were very inconsistent. "Oh--yes."

"What does 'sphygmomanometer' mean?"

"Well..." Daniel said, looking intently at the device and turning the question over in his mind. "That depends on what meaning you want. The word is derived from Greek, but some of the roots entered this language through..." He paused, trying to remember the correct word. _Lingua latina_. Oh--"...Latin. Or derivatives of Latin. But the function of the object is..." He couldn't think of what its function was, so he teased the word apart into _sphygmos_ and _manos _and _metron_, combined that with the inexplicable intuitions he had about things around him, and said, "To measure...the pressure? Or how...strong the pulse is."

Janet was still smiling. "That's wonderful. Now I'm _sure_ Daniel Jackson is in there somewhere."

"Really?" he said, thinking that perhaps Daniel Jackson was a doctor if he knew about pulses.

"Really," she said. "Another question--you met SG-1 on the planet Vis Uban yesterday. Can you describe that meeting to me?"

"I was stopped by a group of men carrying weapons. They led me back to the main village, where the...the others recognized me, too. Anyway, Colonel...uh, Reynolds"--he paused until she nodded to say that was the right name--"said he didn't think I understood English, which I _did_, which is what Colonel O'Neill said. They said they knew me and didn't think it was a coincidence that we'd met there."

She was writing something down on a chart. "That's fine," she said. "Very good."

Daniel leaned over to see what she had written. "I could have just told you that the only memories I've lost are the ones from _before_ I was found on Vis Uban, not after."

"If you _had_ forgotten things from after that, you'd hardly be the most reliable source, now would you?" Janet answered, returning her pen to a pocket and putting the chart down, close enough that he could read it if he wanted to. He thought that was a deliberate decision. "But I think we can leave it at that for now. We'll go to radiology next. This way, please."

...x...

It was hours before he was declared fit. Janet admonished that this was in part because he had squirmed inside the brain-scanning machine while trying to see what it was doing to him, and then they had had to repeat the scan.

"Is anything wrong with me?" he asked when he was let out of the last machine, shaking his head to clear the ringing left by listening to strange, mechanical noises.

"Not in gross anatomy, that's for sure," she said, looking at a black-and-white film on the wall. "No, I'd guess there's nothing at all wrong with you, Mr. Jackson, at least not physically. I want to go over what we know so far, but keep in mind that there's a lot we _don't_ know yet."

"All right," he agreed. He sat down.

" Now, one simple way of classifying memory is to divide it based on what type of information is encoded. You remember not only how to perform tasks and use different skills, but also some facts. That you can walk and talk and don't have any trouble with everyday motor skills means that your procedural memory is probably intact. Make sense?"

"Procedural," Daniel said, frowning. "You mean my body remembers, even though I don't remember learning it."

"That's one way to put it," Janet went on, setting down her charts and tools and slipping her hands into her pockets. "It's the kind of thing that seems automatic, that you don't have to think about to do. The other type of memory is called 'declarative memory,' things we remember consciously. Within _that_, we classify semantic memory--that is--"

"Meaning," he said. "That's what 'semantic' is, right? What things mean."

"Yes, that's right--facts, including those about the world around us. It's why you might...see an elevator, for instance, and know what the buttons do, or know the term 'sphygmomanometer' when you see the instrument."

"Elevator?" he echoed. The word was familiar, the way 'commanding officer' and 'concrete' and 'sphygomomanometer' were, like something he could grasp if only he reached a little more...

Janet raised an eyebrow. "Interesting. You didn't know that word the first time I met you, either. It's harder to judge certain things with you, since you didn't grow up around elevators, and they may not be as ingrained as they would be in an American-raised person. On the other hand, you remembered what a blood pressure cuff was on your own, so maybe, if you think hard..."

When she paused, Daniel thought about the word 'elevator,' which was obviously something that elevated or lifted things, and if it had to do with buttons that made it work--"Rings," he blurted, then frowned, not sure why the word conjured the image of a series of black metals rings. He tried to gesture with his hands. "It has something...there are rings that shine light inward. You push buttons on the wall to make them move."

"Rings that..." Janet repeated slowly, and then, "Rings. You...you remember transport rings?"

"No. Maybe," he said, confused now, because he could think of the series of rings but couldn't place it in context. "They move people to a higher or lower place," he tried. Then again...was it a set of round rings or a rectangular box with doors? Both of them felt right, somehow.

"Just like an elevator," Janet said, shaking her head. "Hm. I suppose one didn't necessarily seem stranger to you than the other. And that illustrates..." She stopped again, thinking.

"What?"

"It's always hard to say what will happen to amnesia patients," she explained. "Your episodic memory--memories associated with specific experiences _in context_, or emotional associations, things that happened in your life--are apparently missing. In some cases, the patient never regains it. Others regain all of it. Some fall somewhere between those extremes."

"And for me?" Daniel said, apprehensive. As nervous as he had been about following people to a place they called his home, he wasn't ready to accept the possibility that he might never remember it.

"There's just so much we don't understand about what happened to you," Janet said. "If we're right about what happened, your retaking human form might have been quite a shock. What you're experiencing now may simply be a result of that trauma, and it may be fully reversible. Let's give it time, and if you're still having trouble with your memories, we'll run more detailed scans. In the meantime, over the next few days, I might have you come in for other simple tests."

"All right," he agreed. "So what should I do now?"

"Well, Colonel O'Neill's back," she said. "He's setting up your room."

There was something important about that sentence. "Why is he...?"

"He was keeping your things for you," she said. "He just went back to his house to get them."

"But everyone thought I was dead," he said.

"Well..." she said, a bit hesitantly, "that's...really between you and him. You can talk to him about it if you're wondering."

"Oh," he said. "Um...what's his name? Jack?"

"Ah...yes," Janet said. "You usually call him 'Jack.'"

"I keep wanting to call him something else," he confided.

"Like O'Neill?" she said.

"Like Jim," he admitted. "He seems like a Jim to me." Which made little to no sense once he thought about it, but he was starting to become used to that.

"Hm," she said, setting her hands on her hips and frowning at him. "Did you know someone named Jim?"

He raised his eyebrows. "I don't know."

"Right--of course," she said, shaking her head. "Well, anyway, it's 'Jack' to you. Oh, and one more thing..."

She handed him a pair of glasses, and he slid them on his face without thinking, blinking to let his eyes adjust. "Wow--I can see all the way over there," he said, surprised. The man who was his brother was visible in an adjoining room through a small window. Janet was watching him, smiling again. She was the only one who seemed happy; everyone else seemed upset, and he didn't understand what it meant. "What?"

"You probably don't remember," she said softly, "but that's almost exactly what you said to me years ago, when I first handed you a pair of glasses. You were about as big as me back then."

Daniel opened his mouth, then closed it, unsure what to say.

"Don't worry," she said. "Give it time. Now, if you'll follow the airman down to your room, I need to check on your brother before he reinjures himself. Try to get some rest before you get back into the swing of things."

...x...

"Hey, glasses," O'Neill said when Daniel arrived. He tapped the glasses with a finger. Daniel stepped back, uncomfortable, and O'Neill put his hands into his pockets. "Recognize me now?"

Daniel looked around the room, but nothing looked familiar. He shook his head. "Um," he said, not wanting to say again that he still didn't recognize O'Neill. He slipped inside and picked up a slender chain that lay on top of a pile of clothes. Threaded onto the chain was a thin sliver of metal that was stamped with letters and numbers--including his own name, he saw, though it was written backwards as '_JACKSON DANIEL_'--and surrounded by a strip of black rubber. An identical one hung from a shorter chain that, in turn, hung on the longer one.

When he turned around, Colonel O'Neill was staring at him, but the other man looked quickly away. "So, does this ring any bells?" he asked.

"No," Daniel said, wondering where he could have found bells. "What are all of these things?"

"Why don't _you_ tell _me_?" O'Neill said, meeting Daniel's eyes again.

Daniel tried to think of something to say but couldn't, and, after a moment, O'Neill gave him a tight smile and walked back out. With a sigh, Daniel sat down on the bed. Tired after all the oddities of the day, he lay back as he looked around once more at the neatly placed objects in the room, wondering why it felt like he was the only thing here that didn't fit.

~~x~~

_"Did you do the laundry!" Jack yelled from upstairs._

_Daniel closed the lid of the machine. "Why do you ask!" he yelled back._

_Muffled thumps sounded from overhead. "Where are you!"_

_Rolling his eyes, Daniel called, "Doing the laundry!"_

_Jack appeared at the top of the basement stairs. "Ah. That's where my clothes went," he said._

_..._

_"Stop fighting me like I'm Teal'c," Sam said. "Look, you're gonna be too big not to take advantage of your size. Try that one again. I'm not holding back."_

_Without any more warning, she flew toward him. His body moved without thought, and they both ended up on the ground with her elbow on his throat. His arm stung where it hit the mat._

_Sam slapped him once on the shoulder and stood. "Try again," she said._

_..._

_"You can't catch me!" Dan'yel called breathlessly as he reached the top of a dune and slid quickly down the other side, rolling the rest of the way when he tripped. "I beat you!" he gasped, grinning and pushing himself back to his feet. He looked around, but no one was there. "Skaara?"_

_A quiet shuffle was his only warning before a pair of arms grabbed him from behind. "Caught you!"_

_Dan'yel squeaked in surprise and struggled, but Skaara was big and strong and held fast. "Evil tyrant," Dan'yel said, trying not to giggle. "You will not take my people!" One hand shifted to cover his eyes and Skaara turned around and around in circles until Dan'yel had no idea which way was which. "Ay--not fair..."_

_The hand lifted away, but before he could see anything, the arms spun him so that they were face-to-face, Dan'yel's feet dangling off the ground as Skaara held him in place. Skaara scowled. "I have captured a prisoner," he said, making his voice deep._

_Suddenly, the world flipped over as Skaara's arm encircled his waist and hoisted him up. Draped upside-down over Skaara's shoulder, Dan'yel panted for breath and thumped his fists halfheartedly on his brother's back. "But I was being O'Neill," Dan'yel protested. "_I_ was supposed to capture _you_."_

_"Perhaps when you are older," Skaara said, _

_"Well, Sha'uri will save me," he declared._

_Skaara scoffed and continued walking up the dune. "The woman is not supposed to save the warrior, Dan'yel," he said._

_"She could," Dan'yel said, twisting himself around as much as he could. "Papa says that Mama saved him in the Rebellion. And you never argue with Sha'uri."_

_"I argue with her."_

_"But you never win."_

_The world jiggled disconcertingly as Skaara jostled him gently. "When you are older," Skaara said in his best _'listen-to-me-because-I-am-your-elder'_ voice, "you will understand that sometimes it is best not to argue."_

_"You _always_ say that," Dan'yel complained. "I am old enough to understand _now_."_

_"But not old enough to go this far from the village," Skaara scolded as they bounced their way down a dune. "Father will tell the Guards not to let you outside the walls again if he finds out."_

_Dan'yel made a face. "But I want to be an explorer. Ay, stop!" he added when Skaara tickled his foot. "Stop it, Skaara!"_

_"When you are older, you can explore," Skaara said, not relenting. Daniel tried unsuccessfully to curl away. "Until then, you will stop going farther than I say you can go."_

_Flopping back down, Dan'yel pinched Skaara's side as hard as he could. Skaara yelped and let go, sending Dan'yel flailing to the ground. He laughed and rolled over, then, seeing Skaara bending over him again, he scrambled to his feet, taking off toward the village gates._

_"You will never escape me!" Skaara called, and obligingly gave chase._

_Dan'yel ran and waited for the gates to appear like they were supposed to, because he had lived this day before, dozens of times before. Every time, he ran, and Skaara chased him, and he reached the village just barely out of Skaara's reach, and he cheered because he thought he'd beaten his big brother--_

_There was a gaping blackness stretching before him. _

_Daniel stopped and stared in confusion, wondering where the village had gone, but little Dan'yel ran on, Skaara behind, both of them shouting with laughter as they disappeared into the dark._

~~x~~

Daniel jerked awake with a gasp. The room was dark and cold, and he was wearing clothes that he barely remembered putting on. He was holding something in his hand--glasses--and he quickly slipped them on. He remembered his dreams here better when he woke, not like the vague feelings of dread and yearning that had often accompanied his sleep on Vis Uban. Still, he didn't understand most of it, and certainly not the one with Jack O'Neill, or with Sam.

The other, though, with his brother _(whose name was Skaara)_...that told him something useful.

Excited, he ran out of his room and found himself with a hand on the handle of another door a few rooms away. The door didn't open. Daniel stopped and realized he wasn't sure what door it was or why he was trying to open it.

Then there was a soft click, and the door swung open.

Teal'c stood in front of him. "Daniel Jackson," he said, looking surprised.

"Teal'c," Daniel said. "I don't... I just had a...a dream, and..."

He stopped. He had no idea why he was there. Teal'c was smiling, though, so perhaps Daniel Jackson had always been a person who barged into people's rooms unannounced in the middle of the night. It seemed impolite, but perhaps it was not in this culture. "I am pleased that you came to me," Teal'c said. "What is it you need?"

"Um. Actually, I was looking for Skaara. I don't know why I bothered you. You were probably...doing something?" he said, looking at the many candles around the room.

Teal'c tilted his head. "Since I have begun to use tretonin, I am unable to _kelno'reem_ as I once did. You are not disturbing me."

"Oh," Daniel said stupidly. "You...what?"

"Would you like me to show you to Skaara's room?" Teal'c offered, stepping out.

Daniel inched backward when he realized he was blocking the doorway. "Okay," he said.

Skaara's room was just next door, one of the ones between Daniel's and Teal'c's. It was embarrassing to have roused one person to help him rouse another. "Maybe I should wait," he said nervously. "He might be sleeping."

"He hoped to speak with you yesterday," Teal'c said. "He will be pleased that you sought him out, and we will not stay long." Before Daniel could balk, he knocked softly on the door and pushed it open.

The person from the dream was lying on the bed, though he looked different now. Perhaps it was his undone hair that hung loose around his shoulders, or his clothing, or the tiredness in his face as he yawned and slowly sat up. "I'm sorry," Daniel said quickly. "You were sleeping. I'll go--"

"Dan'yel, no--stay," Skaara said, rubbing his eyes. He split the syllables of the name differently from most other people here and said the vowels differently. He had done so in the dream, too. Skaara patted the bed next to where he sat, shifting to one side. "Come here. What is wrong?"

Daniel bit his lip and looked back at Teal'c, then entered the darkened room and sat at the edge of Skaara's bed, turning so they were looking at each other. "Skaara," Daniel said, feeling excitement beginning to bubble up again.

"Yes?" Skaara said.

"Your name is Skaara," Daniel explained. "No one told me that. I...I had a dream, and I woke up, and I remembered. By myself."

Then it seemed silly, that he had woken someone to say that he knew a name. Still, Skaara grinned, so perhaps Teal'c had been right. "That is good to hear," he said.

"You're bigger than you were in my dream," Daniel said.

"So are you," Skaara said. "No?"

He must be--he didn't think Skaara could pick him up now, much less with one arm. "Who is Sha'uri?" he asked.

Skaara's smile flickered briefly and then returned. "My sister. _Our_ sister."

Daniel tried to imagine her face and could not, though he had remembered her name in a dream--perhaps that meant he would remember more with time. "It was hot in my dream," he said. "There was a...a sun, and we weren't wearing these clothes. I was running and you were chasing me, but we were laughing. Where was that?"

Skaara looked just past him, where Teal'c was still standing in the doorway. "That was...our home. Abydos."

Abydos. He knew that word. His first thought was that he didn't want to think too hard about it, and that in itself confused him so that he found himself thinking _more_ about it, until his mind was whirling dizzily and his head began to ache.

"Can I go there?" he said, turning to look at Teal'c, too, when he decided he was more curious than afraid of the memory. "Maybe I would remember something else."

Teal'c looked sad. So did Skaara. Daniel didn't know why people kept looking that way around him, except for Jonas, who looked only curious, and Jack, who usually looked annoyed.

"What is it?" Daniel said.

"We should speak of Abydos later," Teal'c said. "It will be difficult to understand now."

"Why? Isn't it my home? Why are we here instead of--"

"Daniel Jackson," Teal'c said a note of warning in his voice.

"I did something wrong?" he said, desperate to know. "Is that it?"

"We are not punishing you," Teal'c said, and looked unhappy again.

"Then why is this happening?" Daniel said.

"Dr. Fraiser told me that it would be best to let you remember by yourself," Skaara said. "Some of these things are difficult to understand without already knowing it on your own. There is too much to explain. I do not know _how_ to explain."

Daniel started to stand, only to have Skaara's hand close around his wrist. "Don't," Skaara said, sounding just as frustrated as Daniel felt. "You can stay--talk. Perhaps it will help you remember."

But there was a light sheen of sweat gathering on Skaara's brow, and he was slumped where he sat. "You're hurt," Daniel said, remembering now that Dr. Fraiser had mentioned that.

"I am fine," Skaara said, tightening his grip, and Daniel felt a strangely familiar panic begin to well up along with his uncertainty. "We can talk, brother--whatever will help you."

It was Teal'c's hands that came between them. "Tomorrow," Teal'c said firmly, unmoved by Skaara's outraged expression. "You are in need of rest, Skaara."

And now Teal'c was holding his wrist, not tightly, but the grip was still impossible to escape. The air thickened around him, and he fought to breathe normally despite the sudden fear that surrounded him.

"Let go," Daniel said, transfixed with a terror he didn't understand, because he didn't think he should be afraid of either Teal'c or Skaara. "Let me go, let me _go_!"

Teal'c let go immediately. Daniel stumbled back toward the door, intensely alert, his heart pounding as if something were about to happen. Skaara and Teal'c were both staring at him.

Embarrassed, he clenched his fists at his sides when one hand tried to rub the other wrist. "I don't like being tied up," he muttered.

"Indeed you do not," Teal'c said, his tone strange. "No one was tying you up, Daniel Jackson."

But suddenly, he could imagine very clearly the feeling of having his hands held in a painful grip before his body, or perhaps bound to his sides, or perhaps his ankles in shackles or his whole body trapped somewhere and unable to escape whatever it was he was trying to escape. He didn't like not being able to escape. He took another step backward toward the door, where it was not as dark. "I don't...understand," he said.

Teal'c came toward him. "Later, you can spend time with Skaara," he said. "Not now."

"But I want to know," he said. "I don't even know what I'm afraid of."

"Not here," Teal'c said, walking still closer until Daniel backed up all the way out the door. "Wait for me--I will return shortly." Daniel found his eyes drawn to Skaara. "Tomorrow," Teal'c repeated. "When you have both rested."

The door closed, leaving Daniel outside and Teal'c inside with Skaara. There was a man in the hallway--there were always people in the hallways. Everyone said they were for safety and not to keep people trapped inside, and Daniel thought he believed it, but he also knew that they would stop him if he tried to escape.

"Mr. Jackson?" the man said politely when he had been staring too long.

"What?" Daniel said, sounding a little breathless to his own ears. He took a breath.

"Do you need something?"

Daniel didn't know the answer. He found he also didn't like not knowing simple things like whether or not he needed something.

"You don't remember me, I'm sure--I'm Senior Airman Banks," the man added.

"I'm Daniel," Daniel said nervously, then realized that Banks clearly knew his name already.

"Can I help you with anything?"

"I...I don't..." he said, lost. He wished Teal'c would come back.

Looking concerned, Banks took a step closer. Daniel took a step back and flinched when his back hit the door. He turned and was almost surprised to find a door and not bars.

"Mr. Jackson, are you all right?" the voice behind him said, and a hand touched his shoulder.

"Don't--" Daniel gasped, pulling violently away. Someone was laughing, but no one else was in the corridor. He squeezed his eyes shut and tried to stop hearing it. _Do not struggle, Dan'yel_, a voice whispered, and laughed at him while he shrank back, and his head was trying to squeeze itself into pieces.

The door opened, and he jumped. "Airman," Teal'c said, shutting the door behind him. Banks nodded and returned to his post. "Daniel Jackson. Do you wish to talk more or return to your room until morning?"

Daniel stared at him. He knew instinctively that he should fear someone like Teal'c, who was very strong and moved like a fighter _(and was trained to kill)_, but at the same time, he also thought that he should trust the other man implicitly. He didn't know how both could be true.

Teal'c stepped away, twice, slowly, and kept a wide distance. "You are safe here," he said, still sounding so calm that Daniel forced himself to breathe and try to quash the thoughts he didn't recognize flitting through his mind. "Is there somewhere else you would prefer to go?"

"I don't know," Daniel said.

Finally, Teal'c nodded, as if coming to a decision, then said, "Have you been shown to the archaeology office?"

...x...

Teal'c let him inside the office and walked past to open the door on the far side, so that both of the doorways stood wide open. Daniel stood still in the middle of the room because he didn't know what he was supposed to do. Teal'c returned, closer but still not close enough to touch.

"I'm sorry," Daniel said. He still didn't know why he kept apologizing, except that it felt like he should for...something. Sometimes, the only thing he was sure of was that he had done _something_ wrong, whatever it was.

"Do you feel unwell?" Teal'c said.

He cleared his throat. "Um," he said, and despite the fact that he was still trembling minutely without knowing why he was so alert, he said, "Why do you ask?"

"You appeared distressed," Teal'c said. Daniel's eyes darted toward the doors, but there was a clear path to either--or both--of them. "Was it the memory of being restrained?"

"I don't know!" he said for the hundredth, thousandth time since waking up and not knowing who he was. _Wok tah_, someone growled in his mind, and a noise just outside made him jump. His back hit the desk this time, and he forced himself to remember that there were always people walking around outside but it didn't really mean anything bad. "Yes, uh...I guess it might have been that. I really...don't like the idea of being...restrained."

"You were first brought to Earth as a victim of Goa'uld cruelty," Teal'c said. "I believe we began your initial training in part because you feared being held or controlled in such a way again."

"Oh," Daniel said. "Did it work?"

Teal'c tilted his head, as if considering how to answer. "You have indeed been captured several more times, but you have learned enough to survive and to escape your captors."

Daniel didn't find that very comforting. He squeezed his eyes shut and placed his hand firmly on the desk to remind himself this was a safe place, not one of the incomprehensibly terrifying memories his mind was trying to recall.

When he opened his eyes again, Teal'c hadn't moved. "Would you prefer Colonel O'Neill's presence to mine?" Teal'c asked.

"No!" Daniel said, aggravated that everyone knew so much about him and that they all assumed he must know all of it, too. "What...why would I prefer that?"

"Jonas?" a voice said from outside. He turned and saw Sam yawn as she peered inside the office. "What are you still doing...Daniel! I heard voices, and I assumed..."

She stopped. Daniel found that his hands were clenched tightly around the edge of the desk. He didn't let go--he wasn't sure he could--but he did make the effort to stand straighter. He could feel his heart pounding, and the surging feeling that had come with the trembling before had now heightened to something at once calmer and more ready to act.

"What's going on?" Sam said, looking at Teal'c.

"Do we fight a lot?" Daniel asked her, calling the snippet of his dream back to mind.

She looked surprised. "You and me? Uh...no, not really. I mean, we...disagreed sometimes. Debated plenty of things."

"But we didn't...hit each other?" he said.

"What? No! We'd never," she said, her eyes wide. She looked again to Teal'c, who seemed just as nonplussed. "Daniel, what...?"

Daniel peeled one hand away from the desk to rub the back of his neck. "I think I'm losing my mind," he said. "Not that there seems to be much to lose."

"No, no," she said, shaking her head. "You might just be remembering events without knowing what they mean. Context, remember, you're always saying--" She stopped again. He pressed his lips together and didn't answer. "Okay. Um. So you...remember the two of us fighting?"

Daniel nodded.

"Fighting _next_ to each other or _against_?" she pressed. "Were we angry?"

"We were trying to hit each other."

She frowned. "I'm sure it was a more complicated situation than can explained by a simple 'we were trying to hit each other.'"

"I _don't know_," he repeated.

"Do you still have the memory in mind?" she said. "We were trying to _hurt_ each other? Had something just happened?"

"I don't...think we were angry," Daniel said. "You...uh...told me not to fight like you were Teal'c?"

Her mouth formed an _O_, and then she grinned, turning to a relieved-looking Teal'c. Daniel didn't think it was fair that they should understand his mind and be relieved by it when he was still confused and holding onto the desk. "We were training, Daniel," she said. "We weren't trying to harm each other."

There it was again--the idea of training. "Is that what we do, you and I?" Daniel asked. "Train?"

Sam shook her head. "We mostly worked together in the lab or in the office. We did run drills as a unit, but Teal'c and Colonel O'Neill did most of the one-on-one training with you. I just like you to practice against other people sometimes."

"Why?" he said.

"So...that...if you got in a fight with someone off-world who doesn't move like Teal'c or the colonel, your chances of winning would be better," she said.

"But I don't want to fight anyone," Daniel said, starting to feel unaccountably anxious again.

Sam didn't seem to know what to say to that, and, looking at her expression, Daniel knew he'd said something wrong again. She recovered quickly, though, and said, "What's that you're looking for?"

Surprised, he looked down at his hand, where it had slid a desk drawer open of its own accord. "It's empty," Daniel said, glancing into the drawer.

"You kept a _zat'nik'tel_ in that drawer," Teal'c spoke up. "It is a Goa'uld handheld weapon that--"

"I know what a _zat'nik'tel_ is," Daniel said before he could fully consider the fact that he did, in fact, know what the weapon was. Had he been reaching for it? If it had been subconscious, did that mean that a part of him felt Sam and Teal'c were threats? Or did his horror at the mere idea mean the opposite? Was there a part of him that reacted to fear by reaching for a weapon, or did his uneasiness at _that_ mean the opposite?

"A lot of us like to keep a weapon close at hand," Sam explained, almost nervously. "For emergencies when there's no time to get to an armory. I don't think you started doing it until your last year or so--Dr. Rothman was uncomfortable with weapons in the lab."

Daniel carefully slid the drawer closed. He didn't know who Dr. Rothman was or why the man's--or woman's?--opinion had mattered. "I don't want to shoot a weapon," he said.

Sam nodded. "I know. You never wanted to if you thought there was another choice. That's part of what made your view so valuable to us."

So that meant that, for some reason, he had thought it necessary to fight people--maybe to hurt them, or kill them. He tried to imagine that now and couldn't. "What was so important that I thought there was no other choice?"

They exchanged another look. "What do you remember of the Goa'uld?" Teal'c said.

Daniel flinched, but there was nothing to flinch from. "Nothing."

"Are you sure?" Sam said, narrowing her eyes. "If just hearing the word--"

"I'm sure!" he insisted, and he was being honest, too. If he did remember it, his memory wasn't telling him anything except that he was supposed to be bothered by the idea. "I'm not lying."

"We have been fighting the Goa'uld," Teal'c said. "I believe that, until you remember about their race, you cannot understand our motivations, or even your own."

"Then _tell_ me," he said, wanting to know and wanting to hide under one of the desks at the same time. No one had talked of Goa'uld and fighting on Vis Uban.

"I have a better idea," Sam said. She walked past him to the bookshelf and took down a book. "You can tell yourself."

"What's this?" Daniel said, cautiously accepting the book when she held it out to him.

"That's one of your journals," she said. "Jonas reorganized them in chronological order when he was studying, and this is the first. Not everything in there has to do with the Goa'uld, but...well, we might as well start at the beginning, right?"

"Mm-hm," he said. He opened the book.

"Do you want to sleep first?" she said. "Start reading in the morning?"

"No," he said.

The sound of quiet whispers reached his ears, but he didn't look away from what he was reading. "Actually...on second thought, maybe you should remember things on your own," Sam said, louder. "Without forcing yourself, I mean. What do you think?"

Daniel had messy, though legible, handwriting. He often wrote in more than one language at a time or used more than one writing system, but that made sense--some concepts were easier and quicker to express in one language than in another. It was difficult to capture all and only the correct meaning with a translation, so if these books were his personal notes, there was no reason to risk losing information with a translation of some things, like...like _lo'taur_ or _sinu_ or _delmak_. It was hard to explain words like that in a different language without excessive explanation.

When he looked up, about to ask what the question had been because he hadn't really been paying attention, Sam and Teal'c were coming back into the room, although he didn't remember their having left in the first place.

"Daniel," Sam said, "Teal'c says you've been having mild flashbacks tonight."

"Having what?" Daniel said.

"Perhaps you did not know precisely what you were remembering," Teal'c said, "but it disturbed you greatly."

Daniel glanced at Sam, who was chewing her lip, and said, "But I need to remember things, right? Shouldn't...flashbacks be good?"

"Well, they can be intense," Sam said. "You've already remembered little things on your own--words, objects around you--and you might be able to ease back into life here more smoothly if you let the rest come back in its own time, too. There are things in your memories that might be...a little upsetting if they hit you all at once."

"I don't want 'slowly,'" Daniel said. "I want to know what's going on."

He didn't look up from reading his journal, but it was a long time before anyone answered. Finally, she said, "You would. We'll stay with you, then. You can sit down, you know."

Daniel sat, still reading.

"I meant on a chair," Sam said, looking down at him on the floor, but for some reason, she seemed to be suppressing a smile now, so he supposed it was a good thing.

...x...

It wasn't until Sam fell asleep on the couch that Daniel realized guiltily that it was still apparently nighttime, so he had been keeping them awake. "I'm sorry," he said quietly, looking at Teal'c.

"You do not have to apologize," Teal'c said, looking sad again, which made Daniel want to apologize again. Suddenly, a face that had seemed almost ageless in its infinite composure seemed tired, and Daniel found he didn't like it when Teal'c looked like that.

"I did something wrong," he said with certainty. "I can feel it. I did something, and now you're all unhappy all the time."

"You often spoke of the rules to which you were subjugated while on the higher plane of existence," Teal'c said. "We believe you were punished for defying those rules in order to help us. For that, we should be grateful to you."

"But I don't remember it," Daniel said. "You do."

"That is most certainly not your fault," Teal'c said.

"Yes it is--you just said it was."

"In no way do we fault you for it," Teal'c amended.

"I knew Colonel O'Neill very well," he said. "Right? According to everyone, I mean, although I haven't seen him since he left me in my room and"--Sam stirred. Daniel took a breath and waited for her to settle back again. "Never mind," he said more quietly.

"You did not seem eager to talk to him on Vis Uban," Teal'c observed.

_Because I don't know what he wants_, Daniel thought. He knew it was unreasonable, though--he couldn't have it both ways. "Nothing makes sense," he confided, "but the things I think I remember about...O'Neill make even less sense."

Teal'c smiled faintly. "The bond that exists between you and O'Neill makes little sense to most," he said, "though the same could be said for us."

"But you're easier," Daniel said without really knowing what he was saying. "You're safe."

Looking surprised, Teal'c stopped smiling and said, "I would never wish you to feel otherwise in my presence, but there are matters in our past that you would do well to understand first. As for O'Neill, perhaps if you spoke with him--"

"Well, it's not like I know where to find people if I _do_ want to ask questions," he pointed out. Besides, he had the feeling that Jack O'Neill didn't want him to ask questions to which he should have known the answers already.

But Teal'c raised an eyebrow, and Daniel realized that he had, in fact, found Teal'c in his quarters without anyone's help, even without knowing he was doing it at the time. It might have been an accident, though logic and something much deeper than logic told him it had been intentional, at least a little. Teal'c didn't mention that, though, and said, "O'Neill may have forgotten that you do not know your way inside the SGC. Do not worry. I am confident you will remember again."

Daniel nodded. "Can I ask you something? You mentioned a word before--something about...te...tonin-something?"

Suddenly, Teal'c sat a little straighter and looked more intent. "Tretonin," he said.

"I don't know that word," Daniel said. He had been keeping track of the words he did and did not know.

Teal'c's hand moved toward his stomach. The weary, uncertain expression returned, briefly, before it disappeared again. "Do you know what a Jaffa is, Daniel Jackson?"

"You're one," Daniel said, pointing at his notebook. "I wrote about Jaffa. Your name came up."

Looking hesitant, Teal'c asked, "May I assume...that you do not remember speaking with me in a hospital about donating--" The answer must have been clear in Daniel's face, because Teal'c stopped.

"I don't remember," Daniel said apologetically. "Was it important?"

Teal'c smiled gently. "Indeed," he said quietly. "It meant more to me than you can imagine."

"Oh."

"But more important still is that you have returned now."

"I wish I remembered," Daniel said. "About the tretonin, and more about Jaffa, and... I really wish I did. But."

"Do not concern yourself--I can explain it to you. Tretonin is the drug that I--and Bra'tac, a friend of ours--use to replace the symbiote that normally sustains a Jaffa."

_("Tek'ma'tae, no!")_

Daniel sucked in a breath as a sense of choking hopelessness flooded over him.

"Daniel Jackson?" Teal'c said, looking worried.

"_Tek'ma'tae_?" Daniel said.

Teal'c's eyebrow rose. "You remember?"

"What?" Daniel said. The feeling disappeared. He shook his head. "Sorry. Go on."

...x...

_**19 May 2003; SGC, Earth; 0800 hrs**_

"Hi, guys," Jonas said from the doorway of the office, raising his eyebrows when he saw the three of them there.

Daniel blinked at him. "Hello," he said. "Do you want us to leave?"

Jonas glanced away from him and took in Sam and Teal'c, scrunched tightly together on the small couch in the only way they had fit without one of them falling off. "No, no, that's okay," he said. "It...it's your office, anyway."

"Really?" Daniel said, wondering how he had managed not to pick that up yesterday.

Jonas smiled, looking cheerful rather than sympathetic like the others. "Yeah," he said. "So...did I miss a party in here last night?"

"I told them to go to bed. They said not to be by myself, but I didn't know where else I was supposed to be. And I couldn't remember how to go back to my room," he admitted. "This place is...big."

Teal'c opened his eyes then, but didn't get up, perhaps because it would have woken Sam. Instead, he sighed resignedly and raised an eyebrow at them. He didn't look annoyed, though, which somehow made Daniel feel more guilty rather than less.

"Maybe I should just..." Daniel pointed out the door.

"You know what," Jonas said, bending to shake Sam's shoulder until she woke with a start and sheepishly released Teal'c's legs. "Why don't we let Sam and Teal'c go get ready to leave. I know this office pretty well--I can show you whatever you're looking for."

"Jonas," Sam said, rolling awkwardly off the couch. "Uh...good morning. Sorry for crashing in your office."

"Morning, Sam," Jonas said, still smiling. Daniel decided the man must smile more than anyone else on this planet. Then he wondered how big this planet was, because it was surely much bigger than this one base. "And Teal'c. If you're gonna catch the wormhole back to Vis Uban, you probably need to go get ready."

"You're not coming with?" she said.

Jonas held up a small, thin rectangle and slotted it into something that connected to his computer. _Disk_, Daniel's mind supplied. _Memory card_. "The general told me to go over what the UAV picked up yesterday, so..." Jonas said. Both of them looked hesitant. "Don't worry; we'll be fine," he added. Daniel didn't move, because he wasn't sure what part he was supposed to be playing here. Everyone played a role in everything, and it was important to know what that role was in order to know how to change it--that much, he remembered.

Either way, both Sam and Teal'c left, leaving Daniel sitting at Jonas's feet with his fifth notebook in his hands.

"So, uh..." Jonas said, scratching his head. "If you don't mind sharing with the office pets, you can use the desk, you know. That one used to be yours."

"Okay," Daniel said, standing up and wincing when several joints clicked.

"Wow," Jonas said, eyeing him as he stretched, then sat down at the computer. "Were you sitting there all night?"

"Mm-hm," he said, yawning and sitting back down into a chair. There was a container full of water on the desk, with two _ahbidju_ swimming around inside, so he carefully set the journal down in front of it.

Daniel's vision was starting to become fuzzy. He wiped his glasses on his jumpsuit, blinked hard, and tried to focus again. Finally, he decided to take a break and set the journal down, folded his arms on the desk, and watched the water ripple in the tank in front of him.

...x...

_The smell was almost overwhelming--blood, sweat, metal, singed leaves, burnt flesh. _

_Daniel heard footsteps. He turned and shot the two men he could see, not stopping when he heard their screams because it was only two more among many others. He raised a hand to his radio. "Sam, he's not here," he said._

_"Here, either," her voice answered him through the radio. "He must've taken Tyler--whoever it was--into hiding."_

_"Major Carter, I have found their tracks," another voice said._

_"Daniel, fall back to Teal'c," the first voice said._

_"On my way," Daniel said. One wounded man on the ground stirred and started to rise. Daniel shot him again and ran._

...

He woke with a start and promptly bumped his head on something hard.

"Ah--whoops," Jonas said, and Daniel slowly sat up to see the other man holding the container steady with his hands as water sloshed gently inside it. "You okay there?"

Daniel swallowed and fixed his skewed glasses. "Sorry--I hit your..._ahbidju_...uh, pisk..." He stopped, bemused. "I can't remember the word."

"Fish?" Jonas said.

Flushing, Daniel nodded. "Right. Fish. Box."

"Actually, it's, uh--"

"Tank," Daniel corrected himself as the right word came to mind. He shook his head, exasperated. "For crying out loud. Fish tank."

Jonas's jaw fell open a little bit, and he asked, "Would it be weird if I asked to record everything you say, just so I can show it to people later?"

"Uh," Daniel said.

"Yeah, that'd be weird," Jonas said. "Never mind. You okay?"

"Yeah. Sorry. I fell asleep."

He received a grin in return. "They can be kinda hypnotic, huh?" Jonas said lightly. "Sometimes I watch them swim around in circles when I can't sleep."

_Hypnotic_, Daniel thought. _Hypnos, god of sleep, father of Morpheus, god of dreams_. "I had a dream," he said. Was it normal for dreams to be so vivid? On Vis Uban, he'd barely remembered them at all, and now he couldn't close his eyes without watching something play out. Sam said they worked together in a lab--why couldn't he dream of that, instead of hearing her voice give him orders on a blood-streaked field?

Jonas's eyebrows rose. He looked out the doors, then said, "You did? Uh..." He cleared his throat. "About...like...a memory?"

Daniel closed his eyes and thought of holding a gun in his hands and, even though he didn't remember ever seeing one close up, he was sure he knew where every piece fit into every groove. "I sort of hope not," he said. "But I think so."

"Okay," Jonas said, suddenly sounding unsure for the first time Daniel could remember since meeting him. "Um. The rest of SG-1 has already left"--Daniel looked at the clock to find that it was early afternoon--"but...if you want to talk about it, I'd be happy to...but obviously, since I...well..." He trailed off.

"They told me I was a good person," Daniel said.

"Yeah, I've heard that, too," Jonas said, laughing uncomfortably.

Shame began to mingle with the confusion that hung perpetually over him. "I was killing people. I think I did...some bad things."

"Oh," Jonas said. Daniel looked at the floor, not sure how he was supposed to reconcile everything he'd heard and remembered. Then again, maybe the two _weren't_ completely reconcilable. A dead person might be remembered for specific positive traits more than for who he had actually been--what people told him might not be completely fair or accurate, especially if they were trying to be nice.

There was a small, creaking noise. Daniel was still looking downward and saw the other chair tip back very slightly on two legs, then settle again. When he looked up, Jonas was staring at him curiously. "What is it?" Daniel said.

Jonas quickly looked away, scratching his head. "I got so used to the idea of you as...you know, as Daniel Jackson of SG-1."

"I'm...not?" Daniel said cautiously.

"No, you are. I meant...someone not really real. I guess I just...never expected you to be..." Jonas gestured at him. "You're younger than I imagined. Which is bizarre, because your age is sort of part of the legend; I just never pictured..."

"I'm not a legend," he said immediately, because the idea of that was worrisome. It was bad enough that everyone else knew so much about him without adding in the complication of those kinds of false expectations.

"Yeah," Jonas said quietly. Then, he pulled his chair closer to Daniel's desk and leaned forward slightly. "Okay, I didn't know you," he said. "But I _do_ know that our job is to defend. Sometimes it requires force."

Daniel thought of the man on the ground he'd shot in the dream without a second thought--a split second of warning, and then _bang_--who probably wouldn't have reached a weapon before Daniel could get away. He hadn't even hesitated. "I don't think it was all in defense," he said. "It was like...I just wanted them to get out of my way." And to do what? To find something--someone? To kill someone else?

"We're at war," Jonas said, wincing slightly. "Every time we're out there, we're trying to advance a larger goal that's bigger than we are. Defense can mean something...a little different, I think, when you're trying to defend a lot of other people instead of just yourself."

"For the latter, you don't kill unless you're in immediate danger," Daniel thought aloud. "For the former, you make a rational decision that it's acceptable--that it's the better choice."

Jonas swallowed. "I haven't been directly involved in a battle--other than running, getting captured, or setting plastique from a distance. And a few times, I just happened to miss the action--like, there was this time with a tumor that..." He stopped. "The point is, I'm not sure I've actually killed anyone before, but a lot of the people I look up to around here _have_ done so. It's part of the job. It doesn't make you a bad person in and of itself."

"That makes sense," Daniel said, because it did, as much as a war _could_ make sense. It was all very logical, and at the same time, the memory of fresh blood on a battlefield--there was a very distinctive smell to it, he remembered--made him want to feel sick. "Could you do it?"

"Kill someone, face to face?" Jonas said. "I'd like to think I'd pull the trigger, yeah. I mean, not that I'd _like_ it. But if I had to, and I was staring down a staff weapon..."

"Yeah," Daniel said, but that wasn't it, either. What Jonas was talking about was literal ability or perhaps the possibility of freezing in the middle of a fight. What Daniel wanted to know was whether the instinct to kill and not be killed was the same as shooting a man who might or might not pose a direct threat--like the man in his dream. Daniel had certainly seemed able to kill him.

"If it helps, when you were alive--the, uh, first time--you were well-known for loudly protesting violent measures when you thought there was a better option," Jonas added.

It did help, actually, a little. "You know more about me than I know about myself," Daniel said, feeling odd, "and you didn't even _know_ me."

Jonas shrugged. "We met once, sort of. And people compared me to you--human alien who finally got onto SG-1 with a knack for languages..." He looked over his shoulder, then lowered his voice. "To be honest, the team was...touchy at first, after you died. I _had_ to find out more."

"Oh," Daniel said. He looked down at his notebook, then closed it and asked, "Can I have the next one?"


	14. Part IV: The Lost, 4 of 4

**Part IV (cont'd)**

"How did I die?" Daniel asked a few minutes later.

"What--don't tell me no one's told you," Jonas said.

Daniel huffed. "Most of them seem to think reading mission reports is too traumatic for me."

"To be fair, I found some of them a little traumatic, and I didn't _live_ them," Jonas said.

His display of nervousness last night probably hadn't helped, either. But... "I still want to know," Daniel said. "I have to know, Jonas."

"Well..." Jonas glanced out the doors, as if making sure no one was there, then said, "I guess that's fair. Okay. You know about the Goa'uld by now, right? The System Lords?" Daniel nodded, listening carefully and hoping something would sound familiar. "They were meeting to discuss a mutual threat. You got in disguised as a slave to one of the Goa'uld so that you could release a poison once everyone was there. It would've taken out all the System Lords at once."

"I'm a spy and an assassin," Daniel said, surprised at the thought and not a little dismayed. "And not a very good one, apparently, since there are still System Lords and I died."

"Well, no. Anubis wasn't at the meeting, and if you'd released the poison, it would've handed victory to him. So you escaped and found SG-1 trapped on a planet that was being attacked by Zipacna, one of Anubis's lieutenants. You, uh...let yourself be captured to get close enough and then released the poison and killed all the guards to let SG-1 escape, but you were fatally wounded, and an ally named Selmak was killed."

_(__"I can save him," Selmak said.)_

Daniel closed his eyes against the wave of guilt that crashed against him, then determinedly opened them again before the memory of being beaten on the ground could take over his thoughts completely. "Did you just remember something?" Jonas said.

"No," Daniel lied, then, as he waited for the phantom pain to subside, he amended, "Not much. I think I killed him."

"Selmak," Jonas said, looking curious. "Yeah, in a way, but no one faults you for it. Selmak's old host--the man closest to him--comes by sometimes, and I'm pretty sure he doesn't think badly of you. So you...you remember it?"

_("I'll be fine," he said into the ship's radio as he held the vial loosely in his fist. "I've got a secret weapon, remember?")_

Daniel rubbed his eyes, knowing he should feel encouraged but only able to feel disturbed. "Some." His last act had been to kill many people, including an ally. How could he be someone like that? "Are all of your missions like that? I don't remember being scared."

"That sort of thing happens sometimes, yeah," Jonas said. "You'd survived missions just about as dangerous many times before. And...you probably told yourself you'd make it because no sane person would do something like that otherwise."

"I'm starting to get the idea I wasn't all that sane," Daniel said. Jonas smiled, thinking it was a joke, but Daniel said, "No, really, I think I remember being...quite insane."

"Oh...well, that's possible, too. The SGC has faced its share of mind-altering substances and technology. You've probably been affected by some of that before."

Daniel put his head in his hands and laughed, not sure whether it was hysterically funny or just crazy. He couldn't believe he'd actually _wanted_ this job, though his notebooks made it very clear that he had. When he finally looked up again, Jonas looked concerned--perhaps for his sanity--so he made an effort to control himself. "I'm not making a very good impression, am I?" he said. "This is all just so absurd."

"Hey," Jonas said, "your _real_ first impression was pretty absurd, too. Impressive, though."

"That must be the...with Anubis...?"

"Nope. There was one time before that. I didn't actually see you, but I think Sam did, and it was common knowledge you'd been involved. Selmak's old host had blended with another Tok'ra symbiote, and that one's old host got...he...uh..."

Jonas trailed off. Daniel wondered what his expression looked like just then. He suspected that _'bewildered'_ wasn't strong enough of a word.

"You have no idea what I'm talking about, do you," Jonas said.

"Sorry," Daniel said. "I've barely gotten to the Tok'ra in the reports."

"Don't worry about it," Jonas said with a friendly smile. "It's a lot to take in." He pushed himself back to the other desk. He nudged his computer off the screensaver--the image on the screen was now a stone from Vis Uban--but then said to Daniel, "I'm from a place called Kelowna. There was an experiment with a bomb that killed a lot of people and set off a chain reaction that pretty much destroyed the planet. I came to Earth, hoping the SGC could help when I realized my people weren't going to see reason."

"Oh," Daniel said. "Um...I'm sorry to hear that."

"Your notes were the first thing that told us the experiment was going to go wrong. It probably saved my life. I would've been right there otherwise, in the way. So that's part of why your name was just about the first thing I learned about this place."

"But I was dead," Daniel said. "I wasn't even _in_ this place."

"Yeah," Jonas said, wrinkling his brow. "Actually, now that I think about it, that was sort of an invasion of privacy, since I've read pretty much everything about you except the _really_ personal stuff that Colonel O'Neill packed away. I thought you were dead. Uh, sorry. I can give you _my_ notes, though, when you get there--they pick up shortly after you Ascended."

"Thanks--and I don't mind your reading my notes," he said, holding up a journal. "I'm reading them, too. Is that why everyone seems to know so much about me?"

Jonas shrugged. "Word travels fast in a small, secret community, especially when you live in it. And most mission reports are open to other personnel, because people need to know the kinds of things that happen on missions in order to learn from them. We try to keep personal details out, but sometimes those details are mission-essential, or they're not hard to piece together."

"So everyone knows everything about everyone," Daniel summarized, a little daunted.

"In a way, but details are still colored by perspective, so take everything with a little caution." He shrugged again. "Which means you can ask pretty much anyone if you're wondering about anything, and you'll get _some_ sort of answer, at least."

"But they all want me to be _him_," Daniel said, frustrated. "I'm..." He sighed, then confided, "It's nice to talk to someone who only knows me from records, because that's all _I_ know of me."

Jonas grinned. "Well, I can imagine how that might be...difficult. But I'm sure other people would welcome it if you wanted to talk to them. In fact, once you get your memory back, you're going to rejoin SG-1, right?"

Surprised, Daniel said honestly, "I...hadn't thought about that. Do you want me?"

Jonas looked just as surprised in turn. "I meant in _place_ of me."

"Why would I replace you?" Daniel said.

"It was your spot to begin with," Jonas said. "I've been the replacement for _your_ replacement over the last half year or so--a lot of what I do has foundations in what you helped to pioneer."

"I'm not sure the rest of the team would--"

"Oh, I'm pretty sure they would," Jonas said, his cheery expression slipping for a brief moment before it returned.

Daniel frowned. "I barely know what's going on. I--I don't...I'm not--"

"You know what," Jonas said, "you're probably right. It's a little soon, huh? We can work that out later." He gave another quick smile and turned back to his computer.

"Can I at least help?" Daniel said, looking at the screen. "It seems I don't like being useless."

"Do you, uh...no offense, but _can_ you help?" Jonas asked.

"Well, I understand _that_," Daniel said, squinting at the writing on the stone in the picture. "It's pretty clear what that says."

"Very funny," Jonas said, and then, "You--you're not joking. Wait, really?"

"Really. It's...actually very intricate," Daniel said, intrigued. He skimmed over the writing he could see, then added, "It's a fable, right? But if you stretch the metaphors just a little, all together it's basically a historical record buried in the specific word choice itself. It's very clever, actually--you'd need to know the language really well to get the subtleties."

When he finally tore his eyes away from the image, Jonas's mouth was open.

"What?" Daniel said.

"You can read this?" Jonas said, jabbing a finger at his computer. "That easily?"

"Sure--I don't seem to have forgotten any of the languages I spoke."

"No, no, Daniel," Jonas said, shaking his head, "you don't understand. You didn't _speak_ this language. I mean, you probably _knew_ more about it than anyone here, but you heard it spoken once and pieced everything else together through guesses based on derivations and logic...or, at least, that was what I'd always assumed. Are you saying you actually understand this now, just by looking at it?"

Daniel looked back at the screen. "Are you sure?" he said doubtfully. "I'm not making this up. Like...the city where you found me was only partially completed, yes? That slab there, to the...uh...left, marks a date when they stopped construction on that particular part of the city, and the larger one on the other side is a warning of the illness spreading throughout--"

"That's amazing," Jonas breathed.

"The main stone is more interesting, really," Daniel said. "It talks of another home and the battles that have been fought there. Somewhere far away. Uh...and lessons learned, which is the fable-like part."

"Wow," Jonas said. "It took me all morning to figure out just bits of it."

"I don't know how to explain it," Daniel said. "I just...looked at it, and I know what it says."

Jonas gaped at him. "Wait here," he said, standing quickly and holding a hand out. "Just...wait, I'll be right back."

As Daniel watched, bemused, Jonas rushed out of the office.

Then he rushed back with an armful of books. He set the first down in front of Daniel and said, "Read this line. Uh, the part not in English, right here."

Daniel looked down--Jonas was covering part of the page with one hand, but the rest of it was still visible. It took him a moment to figure out what language it was, much less what it said. "Is this...Sanskrit?"

"Yes," Jonas said. "Classical."

"I don't think I know very much Sanskrit," he said after some thought. "If I had a dictionary, I think maybe I could work it out, with time--"

"You've read this one, right, Panini?" Jonas said, flipping the book closed so that Daniel could see _Ashtadhyayi_ written on the cover. "From your notes, I assume you read it more as a study of early grammatical theory than as a primer on this language, so that's consistent. Now this one."

He sighed but obediently looked, then said, "It's...East Asian. Something. Um. Hanzi characters? No, I don't know what that says--" The book was whipped away and replaced. "This is Egyptian Arabic, that's easy. And Greek, ancient--yes, I can read those. And this...Jonas, I wrote this--of _course _I can read it. What is this, a test?"

Jonas grinned and gathered all the books away. "Yeah. Come with me."

...x...

"Mr. Quinn...and Mr. Jackson," General Hammond said when they appeared in the doorway to his office. "What's going on?"

"Daniel can read Ancient," Jonas said. "Fluently."

The general frowned. "He _was_ the closest person we had to an expert on the Ancient language. I know that he sometimes makes it seem as though--"

"No, no, it's not just that," Jonas interrupted, then added, "Sorry, sir, but I mean he can _really_ read it. Unless his notes heavily downplayed the progress he'd made before Ascending...well, this is new. I tried a few other languages he didn't know before, and I think it's just Ancient."

The general looked at Daniel. "Seriously," Daniel said, still confused, "this is that big of a deal? There were things written in that language--uh, 'Ancient'--all over lots of things on the planet where you found me."

"It's also," Jonas said, "all over the tablet that _led_ us to Vis Uban and, therefore, to you."

"Okay, well, that's...a coincidence," Daniel said, holding up a hand. "I can also read several other languages that had nothing to do with finding me."

"But the ability to read those other languages isn't something you apparently gained while residing on another plane of existence," the general said. Daniel bit his lip before he could say aloud that he was starting to feel like a puzzle that people were trying to solve and didn't appreciate that others seemed to be better at solving it than he was.

"Look, think about it," Jonas said. "One of the last things you told us while Ascended was about the Ancients."

"I haven't gotten there yet," Daniel said. "I don't know what the Ancients are."

"Well, we don't know a whole lot, either, but we just found out that before they Ascended, they left behind a city of the lost where they might have kept something we can use as a weapon. You were the one who told us that finding the city was more important than anything."

"City of the...lost," Daniel echoed. The phrase didn't mean anything to him, and it didn't really sound right, either.

"In fact," Jonas said, "there were two other devices that you thought were worth risking whole planets for, and you _still_ said that the Ancient city of the lost was more important than those. Then we finally found the place where we're hoping to find Ancient technology, and _you_ were there, able to read Ancient."

Daniel found both of them staring at him again. "I don't know what you want me to say," he said.

This time, the general turned expectantly to Jonas. "You might know something else, too," Jonas said. "In terms of languages, we'd need a few simple tests just to establish your baseline--"

"Tests?" Daniel repeated. The general's eyes flicked toward him, but Jonas seemed too excited to notice and went on.

"--but maybe _you_ knew the secrets that you wanted us to find there. If nothing else, it would help the mission on Vis Uban if we had someone who can read the language easily. It took me _two weeks_ to decipher enough of the tablet to find Vis Uban, even with the start your notes gave me. And you looked at a slab in a picture and knew what it said in two seconds."

"Mr. Quinn," the general said, "I understand, but I'm not sure that's the best idea."

"What? But sir..." Jonas started.

"Mr. Jackson has just barely returned from the city of the lost," the general said. "This soon, I'm not sure it's fair to--"

"Wait--wait a minute," Daniel said, "you think _Vis Uban _is the place where the Ancients put all their most advanced technology?"

Jonas looked surprised. "Well, its name _does_ mean...'city of, uh...'"

"...of power," Daniel finished. "Yes."

"Right," Jonas said, furrowing his brow. "I can't imagine it's a coincidence that you desperately wanted us to find the city, and then we used the tablet you pointed out to us to find it and found _you_. In the Ancient 'city of _power_.' After you'd just left the company of the Ascended Ancients. There's just too much coincidence there."

"Well, maybe, but the Ancients could have had plenty of powerful cities and Vis Uban could have been one of them before it was abandoned," Daniel said. "I just don't think you're looking in the right place."

Now, the general leaned forward. "Why do you say that?"

"I don't know," Daniel said, confused himself. "I...just know that Vis Uban isn't the planet you're looking for. Can I see that tablet and your translation?"

"Well, it's classified," Jonas said, turning to the general, "which is why I wanted to ask permission to show you. But...maybe I _was_ a little overenthusiastic."

"It's up to you, Mr. Jackson," the general said to Daniel. "I wouldn't force you to work before you're fully able to understand what that entails."

"I thought it just entailed reading a tablet," Daniel said, deciding that apprehension about being tested wasn't as important as his curiosity just now. "I can read. Can I read?"

The general looked at Jonas. "He can read," Jonas offered, looking like he was trying to look less excited and mostly failing.

"Fine," the general finally said. "Go and take a look."

XXXXX

_**19 May 2003; SGC, Earth; 1900 hrs**_

"All right," Jack said, feeling a headache beginning to build behind his eyeballs, "so let me get this straight. You"--he pinned Daniel with a hard stare--"told us we had to find the city of the lost--"

"No, the _lost city_," Daniel said, sounding irritated. "It's _not_ the 'city of the lost.' That's what I'm trying to tell you."

"But you _said_ it _was_," Jack said, tired from a few days of fruitless search peppered with local stories about dogs and dancing monkeys that he suspected he was understanding wrong.

"No I--" Daniel said, then closed his eyes and let out a breath. "Look, you thought the tablet was about an incomplete city and therefore found Vis Uban, which is an incomplete city. But the tablet's actually about the lost city of the Ancients."

"Is that just semantics?" Carter said. "Or are you saying the Ancients really lost one of their own cities?"

Daniel shook his head. "No--the Ancients _made it lost_ so that no one would find it."

Jack glanced at Jonas, who shrugged, looking disappointed but not surprised or even in disagreement. Apparently, he'd already thought this through before the three SG teams on Vis Uban had been recalled to base. "Colonel, I went back over the tape that showed him giving us the tablet," Jonas said. "He did say the 'lost city,' not the 'city of the lost.'"

"But you were following his notes," Jack said. "Which said 'city of the lost.'"

"I didn't think it was a big difference," Jonas said, grimacing in apology.

"The notes are wrong," Daniel said. "I must have made a mistake back then. I'm certain of what the tablet says now, and all I know is that it's. Not. Vis. Uban."

"So where _is_ it?" he said. He would overlook the fact that Daniel had been willing to surrender Earth for that damn tablet and the fact that they'd spent weeks looking for the damn city, as long as Daniel told them where it actually _was_.

Daniel looked around the table at Carter and Teal'c before turning back to Jack. "Did I just say 'all I know...'?"

"Colonel," Hammond said sharply when Jack felt his hands clench into fists. "Mr. Jackson's given us his revised translation and Mr. Quinn concurs. Let's clean up on Vis Uban and move on." He stood and returned to his office.

"Oy," Jack said, and started to leave.

"Colonel--" Daniel said.

"It's _Jack_," Jack snapped, and then, "What?"

There was a long pause in which Daniel frowned a lot. "Never mind," he finally said.

...x...

_**24 May 2003; SGC, Earth; 1750 hrs**_

For the next few days, Daniel spent hours at a time in Skaara's room, and more than once, Jack went to the archaeology office to find him firmly ensconced between large and delicate objects in the archives. Jonas had taken to giving Jack a nervous glance from his desk and declined to weigh in.

It didn't escape Jack's notice that Daniel sidled out to feed the fish once he thought Jack was no longer in view, which made him think rather uncharitably that Jonas hadn't even known Daniel and the two geeks were fast friends already. Jonas was _covering_ for Daniel while Daniel _hid_ from _Jack_, and that...well, that was just wrong.

They were even training together in the gym--Daniel had the edge through experience, but he got distracted easily while fitting pieces of his memory together. Jonas had a tendency to hesitate, too, in the heat of the moment, which Daniel had never done, and while Jonas was getting better at that, it would take more than a few months of off-and-on training to gain the kind of unflinching instinct that someone learned from being drilled in Jaffa-style combat since puberty.

So Jack busied himself with reports and stacks of MALP data and news from the Tok'ra and Jaffa until Carter ran up to him one day and said, "Colonel O'Neill! It's Daniel. He, um..."

"Where is he?" Jack said sharply, recognizing her tone for _danger_.

"Near the gym, sir, I think he's hiding in the men's room--"

"What happened?" he asked as he followed her.

She took a breath, then said, "He went to keep Skaara company during PT. Teal'c says he was fine--he stayed after Skaara was done to talk and ask questions, and then when he was leaving, he panicked at something and just ran. Teal'c and Jonas are there now, but..."

"Okay," Jack said, and pushed the door open.

"...me alone!" Daniel's voice snapped from somewhere inside. Jonas, looking anxious, pointed at the far stall. Jack stepped past him and could hear Teal'c's low voice, but it was too quiet to make out the words over Daniel's, "No, stop it! Just--"

Teal'c was crouching on the tile floor, but Jack held up a hand to stop him from saying anything and said casually, "Hey, Daniel."

"Please. Go. Away," Daniel said. His voice was muffled--more than the stall door could account for--and Jack imagined him huddled in a corner with his head buried in his knees.

"Um..." Jack raised his eyebrows at Teal'c, who raised one in return and shook his head to say he had no idea. "No, I don't think so. Why don't you come out of there."

No one answered.

"Floor's pretty dirty," Jack tried. "I assume you're sitting on the floor. You used to do that a lot--the bathroom part's new, though."

Daniel mumbled something.

"What was that?"

No answer.

"D'you just remember something?" Jack said.

"Leave me alone," Daniel said, and this time, his voice cracked on the last word.

Jack rubbed a hand over his face. "Okay," he said briskly. "I'll give you a choice. You can tell me what's wrong, or I can have Teal'c give me a boost over the door and we can both sit inside a tiny little stall until you tell me anyway. Trust me--it'd be awkward."

There was a bark of hysterical laughter punctuated by a shaky gasp of breath in. "Who are you?" Daniel said.

Suppressing a pang at the idea that his voice hadn't been enough to breach the recognition barrier, Jack said, "It--it's Jack O'Neill. Jack."

"I know that. I mean...who..." He stopped again. "What do you want?"

"Well..." Jack said, "Right now? I'm hungry, so I'd kinda like a steak, but that's not really the point."

Something thumped inside--Daniel, tipping his head back against the wall behind him.

When no answer came again, Jack asked, "Did you knock yourself out?"

"_No_," Daniel snapped.

"I'm just asking," Jack said. "Listen, whatever answers you're looking for, I'm telling you, it's not in the toilet."

"Shut up. For once, could you stop--"

"All right!" Jack said quickly. "Okay. Hey! Will you calm down!"

"Stop yelling at me!" Daniel yelled.

"I'm not yelling!" Jack yelled back.

Something hit the door hard with a _thump_ that rattled the flimsy hinges.

Jack stared. "Did you just throw something at me?" He lowered his head to peek under the door and saw one socked foot and a sneaker lying on its side. "You threw your _shoe_ at me!"

"Well, it didn't hit you," Daniel said.

"Daniel," Jack said.

"Jack!" Daniel said.

"Great," Jack said. "Now we got that off our chests, why don't you come out."

"Why don't you _go away_."

"Okay--look. Stay in there if you want. Teal'c and Jonas are gone"--Jack turned and waved at them to go away until they both slipped out the door--"and Carter's guarding the door, so it's just you and me. I'm not leaving until you tell me why you're sitting in there."

"I don't even know you!" Daniel said, his voice rising. "Why would I want to tell you anything?"

"Because I know everything about _you_," Jack said. "Well, not everything. But I know you just remembered something, right? Something bad. And anything that bad...well, chances are, I was there for it, too."

Daniel sniffed once but didn't speak.

"I could start guessing," Jack offered. No answer. "All right. You were in the gym. I assume you were working out with Teal'c." A thought struck him. "Is this about Teal'c?" He really hoped it wasn't; they had enough complications as it was.

A soft, slithering sound came from inside the stall.

Jack frowned. "Did you just shake your head?"

"Yeah," Daniel said. He cleared his throat.

"You know, this whole...non-verbal communication thing...works a lot better when there's not a _door_ between us," Jack pointed out.

Daniel went non-verbal.

Jack looked around, then slid down the side wall to sit against the wall, turning to face the row of stalls and listening for any signal that might mean he should do something. He'd seen his share of people get spooked by some trigger or other, whether it was the distant _whir_ of a helicopter or the crush of bodies jostling against each other in a crowd. A military base like the SGC would be chock full of reminders for Daniel, good and bad.

Finally, Daniel said quietly, "Why do I call you Jack?"

"Because...that's my name," Jack said.

"No one else calls you that. I thought you were my commanding officer, and that's...that's not how it works. I know that much."

"I wasn't always," Jack said. "You call Major Carter 'Sam,' too, even though you take orders from her in the field when I'm not around. Well, _did_. The point is, we're..." He gestured with a hand, then remembered no one could see it. "...friends. First."

"Nothing makes sense," Daniel mumbled.

"Maybe I can make some sense of it," Jack said patiently. "Can you at least tell me what happened today? Just now?"

"I don't know. I don't--I can't..._mph_." The muffled sound was back.

"You know what? That doesn't really matter," Jack said worriedly. "It could've been anything. Someone familiar, a noise...doesn't matter, all right?" The only answer was the sound of slow, deliberate breathing. "You all right?"

"Fine."

"So..." Jack said. "Still 'no' to the coming out, huh."

There was a shifting sound and another quiet _thump_.

"You keep doing that, you're gonna give yourself a concussion," Jack said.

"Why would I--"

"I'm joking," Jack said. "Well, mostly. You really _shouldn't_ keep banging your head on the walls. Your brain's enough of a tangle at the best of times--"

Daniel made a frustrated noise. "Why is everything a joke to you?"

Jack winced. "It's just...it's what I do. Whistling in the dark."

After a pause, Daniel said, "I don't know what that means."

"It's okay," Jack said. "You'll remember."

"What if I don't?"

"You will."

"And if I don't?" Daniel said tightly. "What if I'm not the person you think I am anymore?"

"You _are_," Jack insisted.

Daniel sucked in a sharp breath and pressed, "No, Jack--what if I'm not?"

It wasn't until then that Jack understood. "You're still Daniel Jackson," Jack said. "All right? You do these little things... You probably don't even notice them, but they're there. Everything else, you can learn again. We can teach you again. Hell, you're remembering tons of stuff every day already."

"But you wanted your friend back," Daniel said.

Jack stretched his legs out in front of him. It took a moment before he could say, "Yeah, I did. And you know what? I got him. It'll be okay. But I don't know what to do, either. So you gotta tell me what's going on. Start with today. What happened a few minutes ago?"

"I had to get away," Daniel said, his voice starting to shake, just a little, like a picture that trembled at the edges because the person holding it up was shivering. "It's not... I didn't remember anything, exactly, not like in the dreams. I just...it's all the time, I keep seeing things, or...or hearing them, and I don't know why it bothers me or makes me think of something else, but it...does."

"Yeah," Jack said. "Not all flashbacks come with full picture." There was no answer to that. "You don't have to be embarrassed," he added. "If that's why you're not coming out, I mean. No one thinks anything of it. And besides, it's just me in here."

A bark of something between a laugh and a sob came from behind the door, and Jack realized that that wouldn't mean anything to Daniel, that it was just Jack.

"I know it's been...rough," Jack said evenly. "And you're...it's like you're trapped now, right? Or that's how it felt before? That's why you had to get away. It happens to all of us. But Daniel, hiding in there is not the solution."

"It smelled like blood," Daniel said in a small voice. "And it was...it was hot, and my leg hurt..."

"Are you hurt?" Jack said immediately.

Daniel seemed to think about it, and then, "No. I don't know why I said that."

"How about this: I know SG-12 got back around then," Jack said. "I heard they'd just run into a Jaffa patrol, and someone got winged in the fight. They might've walked past you on the way to the infirmary. I bet Lou Ferretti said 'hi'--he usually does--"

"Yes. I looked over. Saw them."

"Maybe that was what set it off."

"There was so much blood," Daniel insisted, sounding dazed by the idea. "I thought it was going to...to choke--"

"You might've been thinking of something else, too," Jack said. "A memory, but just part of it."

"Part of a memory."

"Sure. Like...this one time, you were with a team--Coburn's--and got ambushed. I wasn't there. You were shot in the leg. So. Just now, you caught a whiff of blood, probably some metal and gunpowder, you were tired from working out, someone yelled 'Jackson'..." An abrupt intake of breath told him he was right. "It reminded you of something else--maybe that fight, maybe just the general feeling--and your nose got all confused."

Daniel laughed weakly. "My _nose_ got _confused_?"

"Your brain," Jack said firmly, "is a strange place, Daniel. If it can confuse the smartest brains in this galaxy, it can confuse your nose."

A snort answered him.

"All right, that doesn't matter," Jack said. "You've gotta stop thinking about it. Just...look around you--you know where you are. You're fine, there's no blood, there are no weapons or enemies around. It's just you and me, on base. On a...bathroom floor. Okay?"

"Okay," Daniel said. He coughed. "No, I'm...I'm fine."

"Good," Jack said. "Now will you open the damn door?"

For a while, Jack thought he was going to have to start over and try something else, which would probably involve breaking down the door. And then a rustling sound came from inside the stall, and Daniel pushed the door open, his face pink.

"Hello," Jack said cautiously, pushing himself back up to his feet as well.

"We've done this before," Daniel said, but like a question.

"Um...no," Jack said.

"It feels like we have."

Jack took the last few steps toward him, dropping an arm around his shoulders, only hesitating a moment because he still wasn't completely convinced that he'd feel a solid person under him. "Maybe something like it. Today, you just freaked out a little bit. Got confused. No big deal."

"I must have been a very unbalanced person," Daniel mumbled. He wasn't leaning into Jack, but then, that was par for the course, too. He wasn't pushing away, which would have to count for something. "The things I keep remembering..."

He shivered. Jack automatically started to pull him closer, but Daniel pulled away instead, looking embarrassed as he folded his arms.

"With the things you saw? You were pretty balanced," Jack assured him, sticking his hands into his pockets for lack of anything better to do with them. "Lots of good people wash out of this program, and you were one of the elite."

"I remember that was more or less an accident."

"No way I would've let you stay that long if you hadn't turned out to be pretty damn good."

"I made mistakes," Daniel said. "The Ancient city. And whatever I did to get...like this."

"Well, yeah," Jack admitted. "When you were wrong, sometimes, you were _really_ wrong, but when you were right, you were really _right_, too."

"Do you think I lied?" Daniel said, looking at the floor. "About the Lost City. Maybe I gave you enough clues to find Vis Uban because I wanted you to find me."

"Never thought of that," Jack said honestly. "Doesn't sound like something you'd do." Daniel opened his mouth. Jack cut him off with, "You did your 'selective truth' routine there at the end, yeah, but an Ancient Lost City full of knowledge and power is not something you'd joke about or use as an excuse. Ever."

"But then how do you explain the coincidence of finding me there when it was the wrong--"

"Don't ask me," Jack said. "Maybe Oma pulled a few strings. I don't really care--and you know what? I don't even care if you were all enlightened and everything; it's better this way. The other way sucked a lot more."

Daniel gave him a long look. "I remember things about you," he said. "I just don't always know how they fit."

Shrugging uncomfortably, Jack said, "Yeah, well...it was complicated, kid." The word 'kid' sounded wrong as soon as it came out, though--he'd barely used it at all for years, and the person who had died for them and then come back to life was tall and muscular and pensive and no longer looked anything like a kid.

"Kid," Daniel echoed, as if the same thought were occurring to him, but then he asked, "Do you think I'm the same age as I was before I Ascended, or did I come back a year older?"

Jack blinked. He turned and looked at Daniel, who turned and looked at him and blinked back. "This is about the driver's license you never got, isn't it?" Jack said.

"What's a driver's license?" Daniel said blankly.

Jack searched his face suspiciously for another moment, but couldn't find anything. "Never mind," he said. "Hey, did I ever mention we used to live together sometimes?"

"Well, that would explain the laundry dream," Daniel said.

"You had a dream about laundry?" Jack said in disbelief.

Daniel was still looking at him oddly, like he was trying to figure something out, but in the end, he only shook his head and said, "Never mind."

...x...

_**31 May 2003; O'Neill Residence; 2130 hrs**_

"I know this place," Daniel said the first time Jack took him out of the Mountain. "Do I?"

"You should," Jack said, trying not to react. He tossed his coat on a chair. "You lived here a lot of the time."

Without looking, Daniel hung his coat casually on a hook by the door. Jack didn't push his luck by asking him how he'd known the hook was there. "Do you ever worry," Daniel said thoughtfully, "that living in such close and personal proximity with a subordinate might make you unable to maintain objectivity in the field, or that, as a person in authority, you might not remain impartial?"

Jack gaped at him. "_You're_ going to lecture me about objectivity."

"Why do you say that?" Daniel said, tearing his eyes away from where he'd apparently been cataloguing every visible inch of the house. "I feel like an objective person."

"Oh, for cryin' out loud," Jack said. "I seem to remember you stepping in at every choice I made to argue that it just wasn't fair, or--"

"Being objective and being in disagreement are not mutually exclusive," Daniel said, tilting his head. "Objectivity is about treating equal entities or ideals equally. We disagree sometimes on the treatment that should be applied to each equal individual, yes? Or whether or not two things _are_ equal. What I meant was, would you be able to sacrifice the person you live with--"

"No," Jack snapped. "End of sentence. That's the way it works. The four of us...it was different. Especially with you. Hell, you used to run to Teal'c's room when you had nightmares."

"Teal'c also used to punch me a lot," Daniel said. "I'm not saying it's something that should be changed, necessarily; I'm just trying to regain a feel for the team's dynamics."

Jack scowled. "In case you've forgotten, you've had your moments of putting me, Carter, and Teal'c in front of entire solar systems, not to mention what you'd do for your brother and sister. And you'd do it again, too, without blinking, and so would I."

"My sister," Daniel echoed, and Jack remembered belatedly that he _might_ have forgotten, after all.

"Her name's Sha'uri," Jack told him.

"I had a dream about her." Before Jack could say anything else, though, Daniel leaned closer to something on the mantle. "Sara," he said, pointing to a photo of her and Charlie. "I met her once. But I don't think I ever met..." He broke off. Jack held his breath, but Daniel only glanced toward him once and finished, "Charlie. I remember."

"Okay," Jack said. "Good. I guess."

Daniel looked down the line of pictures, then backed away to stand with his hands in his pockets.

"There are a few more in your old room," Jack said when he didn't say anything else. "There's at least one picture of your brother and sister that I know of. That one was taken on Abydos, right in front of the Stargate. Maybe it'll jog your memory."

"Okay," Daniel said.

Jack eyed him for a moment, wishing he'd do something else that made it obvious he knew this house, or that it felt like home somehow. When he only waited, Jack nodded. "This way."

When they reached the spare room where Daniel used to stay, though, the first thing he zeroed in on was a different photo. "This must be my mother," he said, bending to look more closely at an old black-and-white that Nick Ballard had left behind.

"You recognize her," Jack said, relieved.

But Daniel frowned. "No. Just a logical... Why haven't I remembered anything about my parents?"

Jack looked back at the photo. "Well. This is a... It's an old picture. _I_ didn't even know her back then."

"So did she look very different when she died? Aside from being dead, of course."

Uneasy, Jack cleared his throat, reminding himself that even a normal Daniel could be perfectly diplomatic and overly blunt by turns without even noticing it. Daniel was still studying the picture. "Well," Jack said. "No, not a lot. Little older. Different clothes, no glasses. You know."

"Huh," Daniel said, and put it back on the bookshelf to reach for the next one.

"You know what," Jack said, "I'll give you some time to sort through these. You remember where things are in the house if you need them?"

"I'll be fine," he said, not looking up. "'Night."

...x...

Jack found Daniel in the living room around three in the morning.

"Hey, Jack," he said in a normal tone of voice as he paged through a newspaper on the table. "I have no context at all to understand this at anything but a very superficial level, but--"

"What are you doing up?" Jack said.

"Why does 'Vice President Robert Kinsey' sound familiar to me?" Daniel asked instead of answering.

Jack finished shuffling his way toward the sofa and flopped down on it. "He was _Senator_ Robert Kinsey before you went glowy,"

"Senator," Daniel said. "Robert Kinsey. Senator Kins--oh. _Oh_."

"Yep."

"What does the Vice President do?"

"Not much."

Daniel folded up the paper again. "Good," he said firmly.

"You remember Kinsey," Jack said, "but not the fifteen bucks you owe me?"

"You remember fifteen bucks I owe you from over a year ago?" Daniel countered, and then, "A buck is a unit of currency, right? I can't imagine owing you animals."

Jack snorted.

"Did I wake you?" Daniel said. "I didn't mean to."

"Nah. I'm just not used to hearing you creep around at night anymore."

Daniel stilled. "Oh."

"It's fine," Jack said, not wanting to admit that, for a while, he'd woken up at night with a burning sense of dread and gone to check on Daniel, only to find an empty bed in a dusty room. He didn't know what the hell he was supposed to feel about it now. "Couldn't sleep?"

"What do you know about MRI?" he asked.

Jack raised his eyebrows and had to remind himself that apparent non sequiturs were sometimes perfectly logical in Daniel's mind. He hadn't realized until recently just how much he'd missed feeling like he was falling into a middle of a conversation, knowing that all he had to do was follow along and let Daniel lead him to whatever convoluted conclusion he'd drawn. "I know you had another one yesterday. I know Fraiser's been saying you look fine. Otherwise...not much other than that it scans your head and makes a picture of your brain. What'd she say this time?"

"Dr. Fraiser--"

"You call her Janet."

Daniel paused, very briefly, but Jack had suffered through enough of his rapid-fire sentences to know that even a brief pause meant serious thinking was going on. "Janet said there were certain trends in my fMRI that are often seen in cases of functional amnesia," Daniel said, now folding the newspaper and pausing curiously on the crossword puzzle.

"Well, we _knew_ that," Jack pointed out.

"It's _not_ quite consistent with someone who's very rapidly regaining his memories, although it's really hard to make any sort of definite conclusion."

Jack watched him squint at the crossword. "You're worried that you're still missing something. Well, we knew that, too. It's a work in progress."

"You think it'll come back?"

"What's 'it?'"

"I don't know," Daniel said. "I'm the amnesiac, remember?"

"Three down is 'spaniel,'" Jack told him, because it was easier than answering the question. Daniel looked up from under his eyebrows but obligingly filled it into the puzzle.

"You were always better at these puzzles than I was," Daniel commented, but there was a question in his eyes when he straightened.

"Yeah, well, did you have cocker spaniels on Abydos?"

"I don't even know what that is."

"Exactly," Jack said. "So...nothing's actually _wrong_ with your MRI, right?"

Daniel shook his head. "No large sections of my brain seem to have died, if that's what you mean. She's thinking of setting up a time to try that high-resolution, directional...something scan she and Anise put together, but even that might not tell her much, since I've never been in that scanner, so they don't have anything to compare it to."

"They're still looking for damage?" Jack said.

"They're looking for _something_," Daniel said. "Jack, I learned all the nuances of the Ancient language at some point while I was Ascended. That means I came back different somehow. It has to mean whatever happened during that time isn't completely gone from my mind, and if we could regain that knowledge..." He shook his head. "I hear that Anubis has the knowledge of an Ascended being. We could use that kind of intelligence to even the playing field."

Jack leaned back and studied his earnest expression. "Funny that you'd put it that way."

Furrowing his brow, Daniel asked cautiously, "What do you mean?"

"You were Ascended," Jack said. "You knew...the secrets of the universe and the meaning of life or something, and you're losing sleep thinking about how to use it to kill Anubis."

"Don't you want to?" he asked.

"Well...yeah," Jack said.

"So what's the problem?" Daniel said, looking honestly confused.

_What happened to you up there?_ Jack thought.

Besides, they'd tried to coax knowledge out of Shifu before Daniel and Sha'uri had stopped them. He wondered if Daniel had remembered that yet and if his opinion would change when he did.

"And," Daniel added, his eyes lighting up, "can you imagine what else could be left in my brain? The Ancients found a way to convert themselves into _energy_, Jack. They built the Stargates, they had the most advanced human civilization we've come across to date... It could be the most important historical discovery... And the Lost City! If we could only find it, just _think_ what they might have left behind for later generations to learn."

"Right," Jack said. "That, too."

But even as he started to breathe a sigh of relief--Daniel, in the end, was still himself--Daniel added, "Robert once thought we'd found the greatest historical discovery in the history of the SGC, and it didn't turn out very well."

Jack winced. "You remember that." What Jack remembered was shooting the SGC's head archaeologist and finding Daniel trussed up for dinner, courtesy of an Unas.

"Be careful what you wish for?" Daniel said wryly.

"Never stopped you before," Jack pointed out.

"I guess not. But it makes you wonder if I should have let it stop me sometimes."

Jack wasn't sure what exactly the 'it' was that they were talking about, but he said, "Nah. You wouldn't be you. Besides," he added, "that's what I'm here for."

Daniel tilted his head, studying him. "Yeah, maybe," he said, nodding once as if he were saying '_definitely_,' and Jack wondered if their lives had simply become a series of one _maybe_ after another.

XXXXX

Continued in Part V: The Journey Home


	15. Part V: The Journey Home, 1 of 4

**XXXXX**  
**Part V: The Journey Home**  
**XXXXX**

_**16 June 2003; SGC, Earth; 0800 hrs**_

"Come on, Daniel," Carter's voice was saying as Jack made his way toward her lab, "it's only been, what, a month?"

"More, counting from when I arrived on Vis Uban," Daniel answered. "Why can't I remember--"

Jack peered inside to find Daniel with his head down on top of the bench next to Carter's desk. "What's going on?" Jack said.

They stopped talking, and Carter looked up. "Uh...nothing, sir," she said, with the wide-eyed, vaguely guilty look she always wore when telling him a white lie.

Jack frowned suspiciously at them. "New problems with your memories?" he asked cautiously. Daniel peeked upward and shook his head. "Okay...so how much _do_ you remember now?"

"Enough," Daniel said, but his tone was a bit doubtful.

"Enough, as in..."

"I can get by from day to day. People aren't tiptoeing around me anymore."

Except Jack and people like their team who knew all wasn't miraculously fine--they were the ones who knew the details and knew when the details weren't in place yet. Jack was pretty sure Daniel had read over every journal he'd written in the last six years, as well as every report filed by SG-1 and quite a few others. There were still a lot of blanks, though, and while most people didn't notice because Daniel was back to walking comfortably around the SGC and greeting old friends as they passed in the halls, Jack couldn't help _but_ notice when Daniel spent more time studying the conversations among SG-1 than participating in them. "Ah," Jack said. "Well, maybe you're thinking too hard."

"I can't just not think about remembering my life, Jack."

"I didn't say that," Jack said. Daniel scowled at him. "All right, all right. Look, I'm here for Carter. We're up on the mission roster, and we've got MALP data from a big list of planets. You need to start looking over them; I'm about to head over to tell Jonas the same thing."

"What should I--" Daniel started, then stopped. "Uh, never mind."

"Actually," Jack amended, "Carter, you go tell Jonas. You two put your heads together."

"Yes, sir," she said, sending Daniel an unhappy look before she left.

Daniel waited for her to leave, then said, "I'm not after Jonas's job. Really. I was only--"

"I talked to the general five minutes ago," Jack said. "He agreed to let you join the four of us when you're ready to go into the field again. If it's up to me, SG-1 will take both you _and_ Jonas."

"Jack--"

"Daniel," Jack said pointedly. Daniel shut up and raised his eyebrows expectantly. "The fact is, Hammond's worried about whether we can afford to keep resources like you two together."

"I'm not sure how much of a resource I am right now," Daniel said.

"Which is why you need to ease back in," Jack said. "Hammond will let me keep both of you until your memories are all back--get you back into the game. And then he'll make a decision, and maybe you'll both stay. You'd drive anyone else insane, anyway, and Jonas is the only one who can keep up with you and Carter. It's the only real way."

"Jack, he went on your last couple of standard recons, not me, because--"

"--because of a little something called 'amnesia,'" Jack said.

Daniel ignored that. "I left. I'm not entitled to something I walked away from." Personally, Jack didn't consider it walking away--not completely, anyway--since that part hadn't come until he'd literally been tortured to the brink of death. "It doesn't seem fair to make him fight for a position he already earned."

"That's funny," Jack said, "because that's kind of what Jonas said about you. Something about the fact that you worked with us for years before he did. You two have a problem working together?"

"Well, no," Daniel said, though his expression said he was wavering. "But that's not the point."

"There's no rule about four people per team--there've been plenty of five- and even six-man teams around here. We're SG-1. If any team's gonna be loaded with experts, it should be us. It'll just mean there's more overlap in our science experts, which means any of you can take temporary missions with other teams without sidelining all of SG-1, and we can even accelerate our schedule since we've got extra manpower."

The idea had taken hold, and Jack was already imagining what that schedule would look like, what with the fact that SG-1 could now carry on with most missions even if one or two of their members were otherwise occupied or injured, leaving them with at least three or four people. The uncertain situation with Anubis and the System Lords meant that SG-1 was basically going to be on call for emergencies all day every day, even more than usual, and that was on top of the regular exploration schedule; having an extra person would be useful in the coming months.

Before he could go on, though, Daniel said, "I think I remember Abydos."

Jack stopped. Daniel was looking at Carter's desk. "Oh?" Jack said, hoping that didn't mean what he thought it meant.

"Yeah," Daniel said, still not looking up. "Not much, but I remember a few things from...before."

"We don't know what happened there a month ago, you know that," Jack said.

"What if I need to stay there to help?" Daniel said.

"Do you want to?"

"Well...I don't know. But what if--"

"The SGC needs you," Jack pointed out, pushing down an encroaching sense of dread.

"The SGC was fine for over a year without me," Daniel said.

"No, we weren't!" Jack snapped. "You weren't here!"

Daniel finally looked up at him, biting his lip, but when he spoke, it was only to say calmly, "I don't know what it was like for you, but I can imagine it was difficult. And I'm sorry that I was the cause of grief and a lot of problems--"

"A lot of _problems_?" Jack echoed. "Whatever the situation is on Abydos, what do you think you can do? Help rebuild a house? Herd a few mastadges? Because I gotta tell you, your talents are better suited to tasks like saving the galaxy."

"You don't think it's important to see whether our first allies out there are even alive?" Daniel said evenly, quietly. "You don't think it would be worth the time to build a house because it would only shelter five people instead of helping a hundred?"

"Don't--don't start with that," Jack said. "You know that's not what I mean."

"Then what do you mean?" Daniel said.

"I mean," Jack said, "if you have a choice between pitching in muscle to do something others are probably better at anyway or doing something _no one_ else in this galaxy can do--"

"They're my _people_, Jack," Daniel snapped.

"So are _we_," Jack snapped back.

Daniel didn't move. Jack was becoming nostalgic for the early days when he'd fidgeted when he was nervous instead of staring unnervingly at people. Finally, he said, "You're going to make me choose?"

"We don't even know what the choices are," Jack said. Daniel finally looked back down. "But if there turns out to be a choice, you're gonna _have_ to choose, whether I make you or not."

"I know," Daniel said quietly. "It just...it depends on their situation. We still can't dial in?"

Jack shook his head. "No lock on their 'gate. Sorry."

Daniel sat back down at Carter's bench. "It's not your fault."

Ah. _That_ tone. "You didn't lead Anubis to Abydos, Daniel," Jack said. "You led him to Earth--for which, by the way, I will yell at you once you have all your marbles back--but Abydos would've happened either way, even if they'd never met the SGC. At least you gave them a warning."

"Skaara says I told him gather men to stay and fight," Daniel said.

"Which was the right move," Jack said. "To be honest, I didn't think you had it in you."

Daniel snorted without amusement. "Sending idealistic young men to their deaths, you mean."

_Yes_, Jack thought. The Daniel he'd known before wouldn't have done that, and as bad as he might feel about it now, it was the only reason they had had time to succeed even to the extent that they had. "Anubis would've had the Eye of Ra otherwise," he said, "and they'd all be dead, and so might we. I doubt Yu--the Goa'uld--would've been able to beat Anubis with nothing but his regular old weapons--"

"Jack," Daniel sighed. "I know all that."

It didn't help, though. Jack knew as well as anyone that the feeling of sending in the few--even if they had been volunteers--as a sacrifice for the many was something logic could dull but not sooth completely. "Just stick around with us for now and finish filling in your memory," Jack said. "We'll see what happens when the Tok'ra get a ship over there."

...x...

_**22 June 2003; SGC, Earth; 1600 hrs**_

"We're never getting weekends off again, are we?" Jack said when he was called in on Sunday.

But it wasn't just his team and the general who met him in the briefing room; Skaara was there, too. "We got a call from the Tok'ra," the general said. "One of their operatives just finished a mission and got away in a _teltak_. He flew briefly over Abydos."

Jack stopped halfway into his seat, then dropped the rest of the way down. "Sir?"

"From orbit, there was nothing wrong with the planet that he could see," Hammond said. "Obviously, you can't see detail from that height."

Refusing to feel too relieved too soon, he clarified, "But the people...?"

"We don't know, Colonel. Korra--the operative--is injured and wasn't able to linger there long enough for a thorough sweep, but he's coming to Earth and is willing to let us use the _teltak_ to see for ourselves," Hammond said. "We'll either care for him here or send him wherever he needs to go--I trust you'll be able to reach Abydos on your own without damaging their ship."

Jack looked at Daniel, who was already watching him. "Yes, sir," Jack said. "Do we know how long it'll take for him to get here?"

"He'll be arriving in about eight to ten hours, sir," Carter said. "The _teltak's_ not in mint condition, so he's not pushing it as fast as it can go."

"We can fly the ship ourselves," Teal'c confirmed.

"All right," Jack said. "We'll need to bring a few things, General."

"Medical supplies," Carter said. "Containers and suits, just in case."

"Electrical equipment," Jonas added. "Spare crystals if their Stargate and DHD need repairs."

"Weapons, in the case that Anubis left forces there without our knowledge," Teal'c said.

Hammond nodded. "You have the next few hours to put together what you need."

"General, what happens when we get there?" Daniel said.

Looking between him and his brother, Hammond said, "It's a relatively short trip. We'll decide what to do once you've assessed the situation. Remember that we have this ship available to us for now, but it still belongs to the Tok'ra. We don't have our own fleet."

"I understand, sir," Daniel said.

...x...

_**23 June 2003; **_**Teltak**_**; 0100 hrs**_

"You look antsy," Jack said when he found Daniel reading in the cargo hold.

Daniel shook his head, glancing up from his book. "It's odd," he said, quietly enough not to disturb Skaara, who had dozed off soon after entering hyperspace. "I'm...nervous. More than I should be--like I don't want to see Abydos, even though I do."

Jack watched Daniel polish his glasses on his shirt, something he did when he was trying to buy time while avoiding eye contact. "You really don't remember as much about Abydos as you do about the SGC?" he asked, settling into a seat on an empty cargo crate.

"Really," Daniel said. "I actually _know_ a lot about it, since I wrote about Nagada and Kasuf and everyone, and Skaara's told me even more. And there are pieces here and there. But I keep trying to remember Nagada and just can't picture it."

"Not at all?"

"Nothing. Not the 'SGC house,' or my old house, or Ra's pyramid, or anything that happened in Nagada proper, people I knew there... I've had dreams of playing _outside_ it. I think I sneaked out some back entrance a lot--"

"Yeah, that's where the mines were," Jack said. "You said you studied there a lot as a kid."

When he received a startled look in answer, Jack realized that was exactly the point--he hadn't even known Daniel as a kid, and he still knew more about Daniel's childhood from what Daniel himself had told him. "Oh. Well. I've got nothing of the village itself, aside from what my journals told me."

Jack frowned. "Maybe you're blocking it out," he said awkwardly. "You know. Psychologically."

Daniel smiled humorlessly. "I've been talking to Dr. Mackenzie." Jack barely stopped himself from asking whether he'd gone temporarily insane. "I know, I know, but I figured it was worth a shot, right? He's dealt with a few cases of amnesia before."

"I guess," Jack said doubtfully. "Did it help?"

"Uh...well, not exactly. Basically, he thinks I've blocked out memories that are associated with being there, in Nagada--but why would I? Why be that specific? Unless you guys have been hiding something really big from me, then...there's just no logic in that."

"We're not hiding anything," Jack said. "But...sometimes, it's not so logical."

"Yeah, he said that, too."

"Maybe it'll come back. It can't just be _gone_ from your memories; that makes no sense."

Daniel gave him a look. "Because everything _else_ about this makes sense."

"Good point," Jack conceded, and wondered with a jolt if that was Daniel's punishment. He'd interfered in a big and flashy way on Abydos--maybe Oma had taken something of Abydos away from him in exchange.

"With you, Skaara, Teal'c, Sam...I felt almost like I should recognize you, even before I understood why. But with Nagada...nothing."

"Well, what about your parents?" Jack said.

To his surprise, Daniel shook his head again. "I've seen the few pictures I have. I know, factually, what they did for the SGC and what happened to them. I remember..." He stopped and bit his lip, turning away to look intently at his foot when he said, "Some things. I just wish it were more concrete."

"Still no?" Jack guessed.

"No," Daniel sighed. "At least not yet."

"I'm sorry," Jack said sincerely.

"Maybe eventually."

"Sure," Jack agreed, trying not to sound impatient with the tiny strides being made and knowing Daniel would probably hear his impatience, anyway. "You've been making progress."

Jonas appeared at the bulkhead. "What's up?" he said, grinning, and then, "Oh. Uh...never mind. I'll leave you guys--"

"Hey, Teal'c has a son, right?" Daniel said before Jonas could go.

"Rya'c?" Jack said. "You remember Teal'c's son but not your--"

Too late, he heard the words coming out of his mouth and stopped.

Daniel pressed his lips together for a moment, then said, "Rya'c. That's right."

"Yeah," Jonas said. "He's starting to get pretty active in the Jaffa rebellion."

"Apparently, he was pissed that Teal'c called him too young, even though he was about the same age you were when Teal'c was taking _you_ into battle," Jack said. "Of course, Teal'c's answer was that you were dead, but Rya'c got himself in the thick of it anyway. Saved a lot of people."

"Right, I read that--he destroyed the weapon Anubis was using to attack the Tau'ri Stargate," Daniel said, frowning as if trying to remember something. "Where is he now?"

"He came to visit when Teal'c and Bra'tac were starting on tretonin," Jack said, confused about where this was going. "He left with Bra'tac once they were better. They went off recruiting rebels." Daniel considered his knees and fell silent. "So...is that what you were asking?"

There was no answer. Jack glanced at Jonas, who shrugged.

"Hello?" Jack waved a hand in front of Daniel's face.

"What?" Daniel said, looking up at last.

Jack raised his eyebrows. "Are you...?" He waggled his fingers near his head. "You know." Daniel raised his eyebrows. "You know," Jack repeated.

"I'm fine," Daniel said, wearing the puzzled and vaguely irritated expression he often wore when he felt people around him were being stupid.

"Maybe you should get some rest," Jack said. "Jonas, everything okay up front?"

"Yup," Jonas said, nodding. "Sam was just checking to make sure all systems will hold, even if they're not at full power. Oh, and Teal'c says to tell you we'll be there in about five hours."

"All right," Jack said. He tilted his head in Daniel's direction. "You two rest. We don't know what we'll find when we get there."

"Jack..." Daniel said.

"Hey, can I ask you about something?" Jonas said, sitting down next to him and thrusting a notebook under his nose. "I have some questions about the conclusions you drew from a few of your studies."

Daniel gave Jack a reproachful look but obediently allowed himself to be distracted and took the notebook from Jonas.

Carter and Teal'c were both in the _peltak_. "I put the kids down for the night," Jack told them. "Should be another hour or so before one of them needs something."

Teal'c raised an eyebrow at him as Carter smiled down at her feet.

Jack looked out the window. "So...about that burst of energy we got from Abydos after the Anubis thing," he said. "Doesn't tell us anything?"

"Sorry sir," Carter said. "Nothing definitive. I've looked at the data collected by the radiation team that checked the iris afterward. All I can tell is that there was an explosion of some kind. Getting quantitative data from a burst like that through a wormhole is difficult at best."

In other words, they might find that barely anything had happened to Abydos, and they might find that the planet was dead. "You can start a nuclear reaction if there's enough naquadah in the planet, right?" Jack said. "We've seen that happen."

"Yes, sir," Carter said, settling into what he'd come to know as her lecturing pose. "It depends on what Anubis's weapon actually did. Naquadah _is_ fissile, but it takes a lot and the right conditions to initiate a nuclear chain reaction."

"If Korra was right, at least we know it's not as bad as when we did our naquadah-nuclear weapon test," Jack said. "As in...the planet's not a ball of fire."

"Nuclear capabilities aside, sir, there are other ways the weapon could have been just as bad. Naquadah is more explosive than fissile--I'm more worried that the shockwave might have detonated the naquadah that the damage could have spread to the rest of the planet. A large Goa'uld weapon could certainly do that."

"However, Skaara has said that their people were all evacuated," Teal'c said. "Perhaps they were far enough to be sheltered from damage."

Carter shrugged. "There are just too many factors we don't know. If the damage was contained, and those caves they're hiding in are far enough away, stable enough, well-enough shielded..."

"I get it," Jack said. He glanced in the direction of the cargo hold, where Jonas was with the two Abydons. "Look, if something goes wrong, no questions--they're coming back with us, Daniel and Skaara both."

"Of course, O'Neill," Teal'c said.

"Jack," Daniel said, striding out into the _peltak_ with Jonas on his heels, a sheaf of papers in his hand. "Was this you?"

"I thought it'd be at least an hour," Jack sighed.

Daniel shoved the sheet into his face. "Did you draw pictures over my notes?"

"How could you possibly know that was me?" Jack said.

"Oh, I'm sorry," Daniel said facetiously. "I suppose it might have been Teal'c who was doodling in my notebooks."

"It was a boring page," Jack defended, suppressing satisfaction that Daniel at least knew enough to know it must have been Jack, even if he didn't yet remember the day he'd walked into his office and caught Jack in the act.

Jonas gave him a grimace and a shrug for ratting him out, then settled in the copilot's seat. "When do I get to learn to fly this thing?" he asked.

"I had to wait about five years before anyone taught me," Daniel told him.

Jack rolled his eyes. "Are we there yet?" he said hopefully.

Carter grinned at him. "Four and a half hours to go, sir," she said.

XXXXX

_**23 June 2003; Abydos; 0600 hrs**_

For a while, Jack thought they'd arrived on the wrong side of the planet, or even that they'd gone to the wrong planet altogether. And then he realized that they were hovering smack over Ra's former seat of power, the _hatak_ landing pad that had housed the Stargate on Abydos. It was just hard to recognize the place at first.

The pyramid was in ruins. As far as they could tell from this height, the land around it was cleared, too. 'Flattened,' Jack thought numbly, would probably be a good assessment.

So much for fixing everything by fixing their Stargate.

Even picking out Stargate debris from pyramid debris, much less putting it back together, was out of the question. Everything below them looked like molten and cooled rock. Jack didn't want to think about what the rest of the world looked like.

"What is this place?" Daniel asked.

Jack glanced back at Skaara's stricken face. "It's where the Stargate was," he said. "There was--"

"Oh, the pyramid," Daniel said, and only the look of triumph on his face before it dissolved into realization told Jack that he was remembering it from a report, not an image from his childhood.

"Our sensors detect normal temperature," Teal'c said as he flew in the direction of the main village. "We are not detecting significant radiation."

"Does this"--Daniel gestured to the view outside--"mean we _are_ or _aren't_ expecting radiation?"

Jonas shrugged. "Anubis could've dropped a nuclear bomb here for all we know, although it's not really characteristic of a Goa'uld ship's weapon. Even a beam weapon, with enough energy of the right type and a fissionable element like naquadah all around..."

"It's _possible_," Carter finished. "If I had to guess, though, I'd say not, but with Anubis, we can't rule out anything entirely...including other chemical or biohazards Anubis might have released for...for completion or just out of spite."

Jack blinked at them. This was what he got for spending time with a theoretical physicist and someone who had spent his life studying the nuclear physics of naquadah. "So we're wearing our hazmat suits," he summarized.

Carter exchanged a glance with Jonas. "Yes, sir, until we know the extent of the damage."

"Anubis attacked just here, yes?" Skaara said. "Perhaps the only damage is here."

"Perhaps," Teal'c said.

Skaara was the first to catch sight of Nagada proper. He started to point, then stopped.

"Is that the--" Daniel started.

"Yeah," Jack said, staring at blackened smudges that looked like ashes embedded in rock. He imagined that might have been a piece of the village gates, once upon a time.

Beyond the gates were barely-recognizable pieces of houses, though Jack could still imagine how they were supposed to look. If they dug through the debris just _there_, they might find part of Daniel's old home or even a few crushed boxes of SGC supplies, left by and for the teams that sometimes stayed here. Skaara's old house was further in, closer to the central public areas. Jack couldn't even tell where that was anymore--some of it had been covered over by shifting sand and the rest was buried in rubble.

"There are no people," Daniel said, though he sounded more interested than upset.

"That could be a good thing," Jonas said. "Everyone was evacuated. They wouldn't have been here during the attack. We might still find them in those, uh...caves of Kalima--"

"Wait," Skaara said suddenly. "Wait! Teal'c, stop!"

Jack leaned forward and found himself bumping shoulders with Carter on one side and Jonas on the other as everyone else tried to crowd around to look out. "What is it?" Jonas said.

"Look," Skaara said, pointing. "It stops here." Jack squinted more closely at the ground and realized what he meant.

"What the...?" Jonas said. "There's a...it's like a line. Past that, it's like nothing ever happened."

"And yet," Teal'c said, "the structures before that line have been entirely demolished."

What they called a 'line' was more like a ridge that looked like it had boiled and bubbled upward, then cooled in place. It wasn't immediately obvious from the sky, but once they _really_ looked, it was easy to see a border, more or less, with destruction on one side and almost nothing out of the ordinary on the other. Only a handful of houses were still there on the undamaged side, and part of a fallen fence, but still...

"All right, that's not normal," Jack said, staring. "_Tell_ me that's not normal."

"A change that sharply and cleanly delineated?" Carter said, shaking her head, her eyes huge and staring outside. "No, sir. No way. Even ignoring blast damage and looking just at the temperature, there would at _least_ have been a gradient, not a sharp change from a couple thousand degrees to ambient temperature."

"Thousand degrees?" Daniel echoed.

Carter pointed at the ground. "See how glassy the rock looks? That's probably molten sand, maybe even naquadah. You need it to get pretty hot for that."

"Yeah--the Stargate itself is over thirty tons of solid naquadah, not to mention whatever the pyramid was made of and any unstable objects in that secret chamber," Jonas said. "Not even _considering_ Anubis's weapon, an impact like an exploding Stargate near a large naquadah mine should have spread a lot farther. It's like something..." He broke off.

"Something stopped the damage from spreading to the rest of our planet," Skaara finished, turning to Daniel.

Daniel was frowning at the ground outside the ship and didn't notice until everyone else was staring at him, too. His expression became wary. "Look," he said, holding up a hand, "I don't know what happened here. I don't even know what the pyramid looked like."

"Like a pyramid," Jack told him.

Daniel looked at him with clear irritation, then determinedly turned his attention back to the ground. "This looks like a pretty big village," he said. "A lot of people must have--"

"Whoa, this isn't an ancient city for you to study, Daniel," Jack interrupted when Skaara's hand clenched hard around the edge of the main console. He recognized that tone of voice.

"Right," Daniel said absently, not paying attention. "I wonder if any artifacts would have survived that--no, the temperature would've been too high if it was able to melt the naquadah. But I'll bet, if we work through the rubble on the other side, we could--"

"This was our home!" Skaara burst out. "Our home is destroyed, Dan'yel! Do you _understand_ that? You--you were born there"--he pointed backward--"and my father lived there, and Sha'uri--" His voice broke, and he turned away.

Daniel's expression was stricken, as if he'd remembered only then that this was more than a trip for the sake of architectural archaeology. "I..." he said, looking around the _peltak_. He turned back to the window. Jack looked for a flicker of recognition, but he only said, more quietly, "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have...sorry."

Skaara took a breath and sat slowly in the seat next to Teal'c's. "The people might be somewhere else," Jonas said again into the silence, forcibly optimistic. "That's what matters, right?"

"Yes," Skaara said quietly. He glanced at Daniel, his expression showing that he very badly needed Daniel to remember _something_, and said, "You said we could rebuild, as long as we had our people. No?"

_I don't remember_, Daniel's expression said, but he bit his lip and stayed silent.

"Sir," Carter said, "I'd like to grab a few samples, just in case we need them later for analysis. We might need it to figure out exactly what happened here. We may as well pick here to do a quick materials analysis before we move on to the rest of the planet."

"All right," Jack said, eager to do something before they stared any longer at the skeleton of a dead town. "Teal'c, put us down here. Major, Jonas, break out the suits and do a radiation and hazmat check first--Daniel will stay and help you collect whatever you need and stand guard. Teal'c and I'll take Skaara and look around the planet in the _teltak_."

XXXXX

_**23 June 2003; Nagada Ruins, Abydos; 0800 hrs**_

"Jonas, hand me that," Sam said. As the vial appeared in front of her, she added, "Daniel, what do you have?"

"I'm still not getting significant radiation or anything that registers as dangerous," Daniel said, holding his gun loosely. "And it's way too open for anyone to be around without our knowing."

"Well, I've got naquadah readings that look about right for this region of Abydos," Jonas said, looking between his quickly run assay and a previous report on Abydonian soil. "I bet a detailed analysis would show different mineral composition, though; some parts of the raw ore were probably vaporized in the blast."

Daniel turned from where he was dutifully watching the land around them for possible people, friendly or otherwise. "Is that significant?" he said.

"It might tell us more about the conditions during the attack," Sam said, "but I don't know how useful exact measurements might be, just that the conditions were obviously unsustainable."

"Soil conditions could have an agricultural impact," Jonas put in.

"True," she conceded. "But Nagada was never a heavily agrarian society."

"We should look closer to where the pyramid was too, right?" Daniel said. "That was the focus, and there was a lot of unknown technology there."

"Yeah. We'll definitely swing by there before we leave. Looking for people is a higher priority for now, though."

"Where did Skaara say they were hiding again, Daniel?" Jonas said.

Sam labeled the last of her samples and packed them. She touched the ground again where sand had melted into a slab of dirty silica glass and marveled at the sharp edge where the heat had, apparently, stopped in its tracks. Energy never stopped in its tracks, not like this. Then again, energy from another plane of existence didn't usually materialize as people, either, but she'd already seen that and its reverse several times now. She carefully chipped some of the naquadah away, already planning the tests they would want to run on this.

She didn't look up until Jonas repeated, "Daniel? What's wrong?"

Sam turned and saw Daniel crouching on the ground in his suit, his face mostly hidden by his mask. She bent and set a hand on Daniel's shoulder, making him jump. "What?" Daniel said, looking around.

"Did you hear what Jonas said?" Sam asked.

"What?" Daniel repeated.

Exchanging a look with Jonas, she asked, "Are you okay?"

"I..." He adjusted his mask, almost nervously. "It's just, I don't even remember what this place is supposed to look like, and...something happened here."

_You happened here_, she thought--it was the only explanation--but said, "Okay, you know what, let's pack it up and get out of here." She pushed herself to her feet and tucked away her box of samples as Jonas and Daniel picked up their weapons. "Let's walk a little and if we still don't detect any radiation or toxins, we can take all this stuff off. Both of you keep your meters out and keep an eye on them. Jonas, call the colonel and tell him we're done."

"Colonel O'Neill, come in," Jonas said.

Immediately, the colonel's voice said, _"Where are you guys?"_

"We just finished," Jonas said. "We're thinking of starting toward the caves of Kalima, if you've found anything there."

There was a pause, and then, _"It's too far; it'd take you a couple of days on foot. Start heading west--Teal'c's going to swing back and pick you guys up to meet us here while Skaara and I keep moving."_

As they started off, Sam glanced back at the corpse of the village they had come to know so well, then turned away and went on. Daniel was checking the sun to find west and didn't notice.

"None of this is naquadria, right?" Daniel said, gesturing around them as they walked.

"No, it's all naquadah and other common minerals," Sam said. "I'm sure Ra would have found a use for naquadria if he'd had it on this planet."

"Well, yeah," he said, "but Anubis has all sorts of energy weapons. Are we sure this weapon didn't release the subatomic particles that convert naquadah into naquadria in the first place?"

Sam felt her jaw drop. She turned to look at Jonas, whose eyes were wide with question. A glance at Daniel showed that he was still obediently monitoring radiation and didn't notice their surprise. "What are you talk--" Jonas started.

"Shh," Sam interrupted quickly, holding up a hand. "Daniel, how do you--what do you know about subatomic particles?"

"I know that they...uh..." Finally, Daniel looked up at her, but he shrugged. "...are smaller than atoms? I don't know. They were released in the Kelowna naquadria test. I thought that was why the planet collapsed. Am I remembering that wrong?"

"Where did you hear that subatomic particles convert naquadah to naquadria?" Jonas said.

Daniel blinked. "It must have been in one of your reports."

"Well, I didn't write it in mine," Jonas said. "I've always assumed naquadria was a rare but naturally occurring isotope on my planet, not one that was...created."

"And I didn't know about the subatomic particles emitted during the test," Sam added, still watching him carefully for his reaction. "There wasn't enough left to do much more than evacuate as quickly as possible. Neither of us knew or said anything about that, Daniel."

His mask hid most of his face, but eventually, Daniel said, "Well. I don't know what subatomic particles _are_, so where does that leave us?"

"Oh, _wow_," Jonas breathed. "That...that explains..._so much_ about naquadria and why our underground supplies went critical. It was naquadah to begin with, just like our original geological data said, and that's why the bomb test didn't just destroy the planet immediately--"

"The earthquakes," Sam remembered from the evacuation, realizing now what that had been. "They must've been minor explosions from naquadria nearer the surface, but deeper veins of naquadah weren't converted until--"

"--yeah, so there was a delay until we reached that critical point, which gave us enough time for the evacuation."

"The naquadria would have decayed to a more stable isotope over time," Sam said, disturbed, "except that the test bombarded everything with particles that restarted the conversion."

"Exactly."

"But what that _doesn't_ explain," she said, "is why Daniel knows and we didn't."

Daniel shook his head. "Look, maybe I remembered it wrong and my mind filled in the blanks with an explanation. Memory is not exact; I know that as well as anyone."

Sam shook her head. "Subatomic particles don't come out of _your_ imagination, Daniel. You wouldn't've said it if you hadn't heard it or known it before."

"You saw the test," Jonas said, staring, too. "You must've watched--you were there, on Kelowna, you said so."

"No, I didn't," Daniel said immediately.

"Yes, you did, check the security tape sometime from when you _said_ you were watching."

"Whoa, hold it," Sam said. She let the past minute of conversation whir through her head, then said, "Look, there's no naquadria here. When we get home, we'll figure out whether or not Daniel's actually remembering something from Kelowna, and whether or not it affects our future use and handling of naquadah and naquadria. Right now, we deal with Abydos. Okay?"

Daniel and Jonas looked at each other, then turned back to her. "Okay," Daniel said.

Sam looked down at her Geiger counter and glanced back to gauge how far they'd come. "You can take off your masks and carry your suits if you want--I think we're okay," she said. "C'mon, let's keep moving. Teal'c should meet up with us soon."

...x...

Sam had never been this far from the Stargate on Abydos--in fact, they'd only ever been here on foot, and this journey must have taken at least a day or two to walk. She'd known vaguely from little things Daniel had said (before) that Nagada had been chosen for its naquadah and not its fertile soil or ease of living, and that there were mountainous regions where the second-largest settlement on Abydos was nestled. Even then, the picture he'd painted had been a bit hazy, like something he might have seen at some point but didn't remember clearly. He probably hadn't been very far from Nagada in his own lifetime, either, or at least not often.

"I cannot land this vessel far enough into the mountains," Teal'c said as they reached the mountains. "We can see caves from here, but we cannot search effectively from the air."

"Would people come out if they saw us?" Daniel said.

"They'd more likely hide," Sam said. "The Abydons have learned that Goa'uld ships flying overhead are rarely a good thing."

"Indeed," Teal'c agreed. "We have found, however, that there are also no detectable hazards in this region."

"That's good," she said, deciding to rule out radiation and chemical or biological warfare once and for all. "Since it looks like a lot of the damage was sort of...restricted, the people might be okay, after all."

"Unless they died from starvation or extreme climate changes following the impact," Daniel suggested. "Like the dinosaurs on Earth."

Jonas was starting to look nervous, the way people were nervous around psychopaths who didn't seem to care when entire populations of a planet might have been destroyed.

"Daniel," Sam said, "could you..._please_ try to keep in mind that there are real, live people here?"

"Unless they--" Daniel started, then stopped, looking ashamed and not a little frustrated. "Sorry."

Sam leaned against the back of Teal'c's chair and reminded himself that Daniel got like that sometimes--he would be the first to argue for a people's rights, but he would also be the first to poke at some unusual corpse and declare that it was interesting. If he didn't remember Abydos, then his reaction to this destruction was, if a little cold, not totally out of the ordinary. In fact, it was exactly the way Daniel Jackson would react to a planet that looked like this, which they would have assumed to be abandoned. Maybe this was his way of coping.

"Yeah," she said. She patted his arm. "Just tone it down, okay?"

Daniel nodded once, suddenly looking very uneasy again. "I don't like it here," he said.

Surprised, Sam turned to him and said, "What? What do you mean?"

He shrugged. "I just..." He stopped. "I don't know. Never mind."

"No, no," she said. After what he'd just told them about naquadria without even _thinking_ about it, she was not about to ignore it when he said he had a bad feeling about something. "Teal'c slow down. Daniel, what are you talking ab--"

"Teal'c, it's fine," Daniel said, but he was standing far too stiffly for that to be the case. "It's nothing."

Teal'c looked sideways at Sam. She nodded to him to keep flying, but turned back to Daniel, aware of Jonas hovering nearby, unsure whether to jump in. "I need to know what's going on with you, Daniel," she said frankly.

"This place...just...makes me uncomfortable," he said, clearly at a loss himself. He stared out the window for a moment, then shook his head. "I don't think it's anything real to worry about. I just don't like it, that's all."

"Maybe you're psychic," Jonas suggested.

"I'm not psychic," Daniel retorted. "You're the one whose tumor could predict the future."

"So it's possible," Jonas said.

"But there's no reason to think that in this case," Sam said, thinking. "You still don't remember anything about Nagada, or..."

Daniel's hand clenched a little tighter on the console in front of him. "I feel like I forgot something...really important."

"Then this trip might help," she said.

"Not like that. Something else. I shouldn't be here." When she stared at him, not sure how to answer that, Daniel rubbed his eyes and said, "Never mind. I don't know what I'm saying."

"You know what?" she suggested. "Maybe there's some cognitive dissonance associated with this place, even if some of it is subconscious. You know it, but you don't. You...know what happened back there and how, on some level, but logic tells you now that it makes no sense. That might be what's making you uneasy."

"Maybe," Daniel said. He took a breath, as if deliberately calming himself, and stuffed his hands into his pockets.

"Are you going to be okay?" she said.

"Yeah."

Sam looked past him to Jonas, raising her eyebrows and glancing pointedly at Daniel. _Keep an eye on him_. Jonas nodded.

"I will land here, and we will proceed on foot," Teal'c said as he set the _teltak_ down. "Skaara is leading O'Neill toward what he believes is the most likely location."

Jonas stepped out first and looked around. "Are you sure this is the right way?"

"I am certain that we came this way with Skaara," Teal'c said. "Come."

Eventually, though, they reached the end of where Teal'c had followed Skaara and the colonel, and he admitted that he couldn't follow their trail much further on the rock.

"All right, someone get the colonel to use his radio," Sam said, carefully checking her footing before she pulled out her meter and set it to track an RF signal. "Skaara probably knows the way, and the colonel will be with him."

As Jonas reached for his radio, Daniel said, "Hey, I think I see them. Jack!" he called, squinting.

Sam moved until she could see around the bend in the path and followed his gaze. "Oh my god," she breathed when she caught a glimpse of waving cloth that Daniel must have missed with his myopic eyes--that was part of a robe, not combat gear. "That's not the colonel or Skaara."

Even as Teal'c and Jonas scrambled to join them, the person in the distance stopped. Sam couldn't tell from here what he--or she--was doing, but suddenly, the figure disappeared. "Hey!" Jonas yelled, his voice echoing loudly. "Hello? We're friends! S! G! 1!"

"C'mon," Sam said, leading the way around the path as it narrowed and then softened into a less rocky road. "Hello!" she called, too. "Don't be afraid! We're--"

_"Quit yelling,"_ the colonel's voice said through their radios. _"Keep walking--you're almost there."_

As if that were the signal, the speck of a person came back out into view, and close behind was another, and another, and then a flow of _people_, and excited voices shouting back...

Sam picked up her pace and, and soon she could see what looked like the entire population of Nagada trying to crowd into the path and rush toward them in a wave. Two blurs of olive drab caught her eye, one of them barely managing to break out of the mass of people and the other yelling, _"Hey, kids!"_

"Sha'uri. I know that one--that's Sha'uri," Daniel said suddenly, perking up for the first time on this planet as another familiar head popped into view, and he rushed past them.

Sam, Jonas, and Teal'c caught up to him just in time to collide with the Abydonian people. Looking out at the open valley that opened up beyond the pass they'd taken to get here, she could see now that their clothing and even coloring didn't all look Nagadan--some of these were people from Nagada, but others were from the other villages and towns she'd heard about before and never seen.

"Major Carter!" someone yelled. It was a young woman who had spoken, one she'd seen in passing a few times before, but several others waved enthusiastically in her direction. Sam waved back and smiled when she saw Kasuf nod at her while Sha'uri tried her very best to strangle her brother in a hug.

Colonel O'Neill was watching with a smile. "Sir," Sam said. "What...they all...?"

"They were miles away from the blast," the colonel said. "Apparently, they actually heard it, but the mountains are fine. Everyone from Nagada has set up shop here. People from more distant towns and villages have gone back to their homes, but Kasuf sent messengers to give them the news about Anubis and the Eyes. They tried to contact us, but obviously..."

"So they've seen the blast site," she said grimly.

His face became more serious. "Yeah," he said. "A lot of people went out there. There was talk of rebuilding, but Sha'uri's been telling people to stay here in the mountains for now--they've at least got shelter here in the caves and fertile ground nearby, and they need all their workers _here_ if they're going to survive past the next harvest season."

"You think they'll make it, sir?" she asked, looking past him and into the village, where even more people were pouring out.

"Yeah, they'll live," O'Neill said confidently. "They're tough. But it'll be hard."

"They're cut off from most of their usual resources, which means they can't trade for all their food. They've never lived anywhere like this. And frankly, I don't think Nagada's sustainable anymore, sir--even a little plant growth will be hard, and I didn't see any animals at all."

"They used to trade in livestock, right?" Jonas remembered. "Talk about changing lifestyles."

"Closer to a river here, though," the colonel said. "A two-hour walk if you're careful not to slip down a cliff face. Kalima natives who are used to the land can make the trip in half that."

"Colonel, has someone checked their water source?" Jonas said. "If enough naquadah particles got spread around after the blast, it could potentially exceed toxic levels."

"As well as other contaminants that might've gotten into the water," Sam added.

"Haven't gotten a chance to check yet," the colonel said. "That'll be a priority. Soil, too, for farming. Do you have what you need to take a look at that?"

"I think so, sir," she said, thinking over the equipment they'd brought. "We can start, at least."

The noise of the crowd stopped.

Sam turned around and saw Daniel standing uncertainly before the throng. As she watched, he took a single step back and looked like he was considering taking several more.

"I'll handle this, Major," the colonel said. "Take Teal'c and Jonas. Follow this path here and figure out what these people need that we can fit it into a _teltak_."

"Yes, sir," she said, then caught Jonas and Teal'c's eyes and gestured for them to follow her.


	16. Part V: The Journey Home, 2 of 4

**Part V (cont'd)**

_**23 June 2003; Kalima, Abydos; 0830 hrs**_

"The others did not escape?" Sha'uri said.

Jack shook his head. "I'm sorry. There's just no way anyone survived that blast except through the Stargate, and only Skaara made it through that way."

"But they turned into light," Skaara said, turning to Jack as if for proof. "Like Dan'yel did. All of us saw."

"We think most of the men who fell defending Abydos Ascended," Jack confirmed.

Daniel suddenly looked over his shoulder, then turned back, frowning. The others didn't seem to notice, though, because Kasuf had come over to touch him lightly on the shoulder. "Hello?" Daniel said, sounding slightly unnerved.

"Dan'yel," Kasuf said, spreading his arms.

When Daniel didn't move--he must not have remembered that the correct response was a hug and might not remember Kasuf at all--Jack stepped in to say, "Ah...yes. That's the other thing. Daniel's back"--he raised his voice to be heard over a sudden outbreak of whispers--"but he doesn't remember very much."

"You are back," Sha'uri said, sounding stunned.

"Uh," Daniel said.

"_Sho'ni_!" someone said suddenly, and pointed in the direction where the Stargate had once been and where their village had been destroyed. "_Irif Dan'yel pen._"

"_Na nay,_" Daniel answered, holding up his hands and stepping back. "_Ne sakhiu_!"

"He really doesn't remember!" Jack said over the noise. "All right? We don't know what happened back there."

"But why did you come back to our world?" Kasuf asked Daniel.

"I...I don't know," Daniel said.

"Look, can we have some space?" Jack called. "Skaara's back..." A glance over showed Skaara, looking very tired but exhilarated, clutching a girl to himself. "There, you see? _They've_ got the right idea. Go and catch up. Plan a wedding. We need to talk to Kasuf."

To his surprise, Sha'uri pulled away and said, "Please, come with me, Colonel. Father..." She stood on her toes to speak quietly into his ear. Kasuf nodded and raised his voice to call some sort of order while Sha'uri beckoned Jack and Daniel back into the ramshackle camp their village had set up.

...x...

"My father still commands much respect among the people," Sha'uri told them once they were in her makeshift tent, "but he is growing old. He has been badly ill twice in the last year."

"Ah," Jack said. "I'm sorry to hear that."

"Yes," she agreed calmly, smiling quickly at him. Daniel was staring at her as she sat down, and Jack realized that he had no idea where she stood on the spectrum between remembrance and total amnesia, except that he'd dreamed up her name on his own. "Dan'yel?" she said, reaching out to touch his knee.

"I remember you," Daniel said. "And Skaara has told me a lot about you."

"But you do not remember my father? Kasuf? " she asked. Daniel didn't answer, looking embarrassed. "Perhaps there are...things at the SGC that reminded you of my brother and of me."

"Amaunet," Daniel said.

Taken aback, Sha'uri paused and glanced at Jack before nodding. "Yes. You remember--?"

"Shifu," he blurted suddenly. "You were at the SGC with Shifu. We dreamed together, and I never wrote down what we dreamed, but I remember it. And Cimmeria--"

"Yes." Sha'uri squeezed his knee and let go, smiling warmly but keeping a careful distance when it was clear Daniel was still uncomfortable. There was another short hesitation, and then, "You spoke to me of Shifu." She pointed upward. "While you were Ascended. Do you remember?"

"No," Daniel said. "I don't."

Seemingly still stuck on the fact that he'd been there at all and had then come back, she said, "You were so powerful. Why would you wish to give that away?"

"I don't know," Daniel repeated. "Maybe I didn't. We...we think it was my punishment."

"For what?" she said, bewildered.

"Actually," Jack said, "I'm not so sure it was a punishment. _I_ think you Descended all on your own because you got sick of the Others' being so stuck up."

"In any case," Daniel said, shooting him a glance, "there are more important things to talk about now. Like what we're going to do now that we don't have a Stargate on this planet."

Sha'uri nodded. "We will survive, as we always do. Nagada has been our home for thousands of years, but there is enough space in the mountains for Kalima and us both. And if there is no Stargate, then no Goa'uld can use it to find us."

"Anubis didn't need a Stargate," Jack pointed out, but he'd been thinking and had just about come to the same conclusion that she had.

"We can never avoid all danger," Sha'uri said. "The Goa'uld have no reason to return here now that the Eye of Ra is gone, and perhaps they will believe that Anubis destroyed this planet."

Jack nodded slowly. "We can try to leak that rumor," he said. "Let it get out that the Abydonian people died in Anubis's attack. We can even arrange it so that, as far as most of Earth is concerned, there's nothing left here. Not even a rogue division of our government would have any reason to be interested."

"Wh...but...you think we should cut off ties?" Daniel said. "What about...there's still naquadah here. There's...there's..."

_...not a lot that Earth's governments care about_, Jack thought. "I'm not saying I _want_ to cut off ties," he said carefully. "Unless it turns out to be the best option--the _safest_ option."

Daniel stared at him, then Sha'uri, and then back. "We can get a new Stargate," he said.

"You can't just pick one up at the Home Depot," Jack pointed out.

"There are abandoned planets," Daniel said. "Jack, we could...haul a 'gate over here, like we were going to do for the Tok'ra, and--"

"And we don't have a mothership," Jack said. "A Stargate's not going to fit inside a _teltak_."

"What about the _Prometheus_?" he said more insistently. "Wasn't that supposed to be repaired in...in a few months? Even an _al'kesh_ might be big enough, if we ever salvage one. All we'd need to do is find some abandoned planet and bring its 'gate to Abydos. It's not even that far. We'd only need...a week, maybe, to move it and then set it up and go home."

"That area where it used to be is uninhabitable."

"It doesn't _matter_ where we _put_ it," Daniel said emphatically.

"Perhaps it is safer like this," Sha'uri said.

Daniel looked like he'd been punched in the gut. "It's not a long trip," Jack said. "It's the closest planet to us in the Stargate network, Daniel. All you need is a ship with a hyperdrive and a day or so of free time to get there and back."

"We don't have a ship with a hyperdrive," Daniel answered tensely. "Even when the _Prometheus_ is repaired, we're going to need it to protect Earth. Trips to another planet wouldn't be authorized without a good reason, not when it takes a ship out of communications range for days at a time when we need every scrap of defense we can get."

Jack looked at Sha'uri, who seemed genuinely regretful when she said, "I would be greatly saddened to lose the friendship of the Tau'ri. You have done much for me and for my people. But Abydos has survived without Earth, and we will again. Kalima has been kind to the inhabitants of Nagada, and we have begun to rebuild here. I am sure Colonel O'Neill will agree that Earth also does not need Abydos."

"That's not true," Daniel said, though even he didn't sound very convinced.

"It is, my brother," Sha'uri said. "Are there not planets where the SGC can find naquadah? We have little to offer the SGC."

"For the record," Jack said, "the SGC is also very glad to have friends here. If it's all right with you, we'd like to send a few people to help you get started here in the mountains. And there's no reason we can't send a ship once in a while to check. Not often, and probably not anytime soon, since this is the only working ship we've got, but we could eventually find a way."

"And our naquadah?" Sha'uri said. "Your teams have mined carefully to avoid disturbing us, but if we will no longer have the Stargate, we would allow you to take all you need when you go."

"Sure," Jack said. "Now, all of this still has to be approved, but I'm pretty sure it will be."

Sha'uri nodded. "Agreed, with our thanks for all you have done for us."

It was a long moment before Jack realized no one was speaking because they were both waiting for Daniel to protest again. Instead, Daniel said, looking at his feet, "It'll take some time. Right? To...to mine and all."

"Yeah," Jack said. "I don't know if SG-1 can stay the whole time, depending on how much we're going to try to do, but we'll be here if possible."

Daniel nodded. "How long do I have?" he asked, his voice quiet, though he still looked unusually on edge. Sha'uri looked like she wanted to reach for him again but pulled her hand back.

Jack didn't have to ask what he was talking about. "I'd say...couple of weeks, with another check-in after that--maybe once the _Prometheus_ is available again--to make sure things are going well and to tie up last loose ends."

"Right," Daniel said. He nodded again, then stood and left without a word.

Jack debated going after him, but logically, he wasn't going anywhere far from his people, and Jack had a few things left to finish up here. "I'm going back to the SGC soon," he told Sha'uri instead. "I'll take Jonas with me, and hopefully, we'll be back with more personnel and equipment, as well as instructions on how to handle this situation."

Sha'uri nodded. "Your people are welcome here, Colonel, for as long as you can stay. I do not wish to sound ungrateful to your people, but--"

"We've brought enough trouble down on you folks," Jack said, shaking his head. "Our only concern is doing whatever's best for your safety. If that means leaving you out of our reach, then we wish you the best."

"I saw the ruins of Nagada," she said. "It is strange--I mourned the destruction of our burial grounds nearly as much as I do the loss of our home."

"Yeah, uh, it's...a lot of take in," Jack said awkwardly, not really sure how to answer that. He was pretty sure any one of his teammates was better than he at talking to friendly allies.

But she only nodded. "We will remember all that we lost and gained, but our past held many lies and much suffering. Perhaps this is how we can begin again, finally. Nagada was chosen for its mineral; our ancestors lived there as slaves. We can begin here as free people in Kalima. Nagada was our past; Kalima can be our future."

"Well, I'm sure you'll do fine," Jack said.

Sha'uri stood, wrapping her robe more tightly around herself. "Take care of Dan'yel for us, Colonel," she said.

"I'm not sure he'll be coming with us when we go," he confided, standing up with her.

With a small smile, she said, "You have now known him nearly as long as I. How could he ever be at peace here, knowing what the SGC is?" Jack nodded but didn't answer. "Please, come, Colonel--the people are eager to speak to you."

XXXXX

_**23 June 2003; Kalima, Abydos; 1900 hrs**_

When darkness fell, Teal'c found Daniel Jackson sitting against the side of the cave where they were staying for the night. A glance inside showed that Major Carter was preparing to sleep--she had spent the day examining the local water sources and planning ways to improve its use--so he returned to the outside and sat down in front of Daniel Jackson.

"Are you all right?" Teal'c said.

Daniel Jackson jumped, as if surprised to see him there. "Teal'c! What?"

"Of what are you thinking?" Teal'c asked.

"Um...well, you know," Daniel Jackson said, hunching his shoulders uncomfortably. "Things."

"Do you not wish to spend time with your people?" Teal'c asked.

"I spent all day walking around and meeting people, but I don't know what to say to them," he said. "They all know me and expect me to know them. And apparently I used to be...a little disobedient and sometimes ran off on my own to go exploring--what are you laughing at?"

Teal'c did not bother to stop smiling. "I am not laughing."

Looking exasperated, Daniel Jackson said, "Well, no one's sure whether or not I should recognize Kalima at all, especially with the new settlement here in the mountains."

"Did you recognize Nagada after spending some time there?" Teal'c asked.

He shrugged. "No, not really. And now this..."

The first time Teal'c had returned to Chulak to find that the towns had been reorganized, his old home abandoned, his wife's home also abandoned... "It no longer feels like your home," Teal'c guessed.

"According to what I'm told, it hasn't been my home for a while," he said, quietly. "And I think people here expect me to...to make it rain on their crops or something." Teal'c raised an eyebrow. "Someone asked me to do that while I was helping with reconstruction," Daniel Jackson admitted. "They're starting their farms from scratch and could use some help from the heavens."

"I see," Teal'c said.

"At least at the SGC, inexplicable things are expected to happen," he said. "At least people there knew who I am now, not someone--or something--I used to be."

That was not completely true--many even now looked at him and half-expected him to Ascend--but it was true for SG-1, at least. "What of Skaara?" Teal'c asked.

"Well, Skaara's different," Daniel said. "He and Sha'uri have probably seen things even we would find hard to imagine. They understand better."

Teal'c nodded. "Where is he now?"

"With Seinah," he said. His face took on an expression that was both dismayed and mischievous. "She's very excited that he's alive, and they're going to marry as soon as Skaara's had a chance to set up a home with her, so...I really don't want to see what they're doing right now."

Teal'c suppressed a smile. "You will understand one day," he said.

Daniel Jackson rolled his eyes. "I _understand_; I just don't need to think about it. Anyway, that was my day. How was yours?"

"Productive," Teal'c said. "The rebuilding has been going well." He attempted to discover what it was that continued to bother Daniel Jackson. "Is something else the matter?"

"No," Daniel Jackson said, and then, "Maybe. I think I'm remembering a few things from when I was Ascended."

"What things?" Teal'c asked.

He shook his head, looking bewildered. "It doesn't all make sense. Most of it's just feelings of...something. Images. Everything I think I remember is something I could have just imagined or dreamed, not anything particularly otherworldly. And..." He looked around, perhaps to ascertain that there were no people nearby, then lowered his voice. "Did Jack ever tell you exactly what Ba'al did to him? There's a note in the report about using the sarcophagus, but did he ever mention anything...well, specific?"

Taken aback, Teal'c could only shake his head. "Indeed he did not. To my knowledge, no one at the SGC knows the details of what he suffered."

"So there's no way I would've heard the details somewhere."

Teal'c set his hands on the ground and leaned his weight onto them. "You believe that you were present during his time in Ba'al's outpost."

Daniel Jackson clenched his hands into fists and knocked one of them agitatedly against his thigh. "If so, one would think I'd have done something more than watch, yes?"

"Perhaps you were unable to act," Teal'c said. "O'Neill himself may be able to shed more light upon this."

Uneasily, Daniel Jackson said, "I don't think he really needs to be reminded of that. Teal'c, don't, uh...don't tell him I said--"

"I will not," Teal'c assured him. He had imagined O'Neill's torture in Ba'al's prison too many times already.

"So. Does Ba'al...huh."

"Are there other instances that you remember?" Teal'c asked. Daniel Jackson blinked thoughtfully at the ground and did not answer. Teal'c peered through the dim lamplight at his friend's eyes and found them unfocused. "Daniel Jackson?"

"What?" he said, startled into looking back up.

This was not the first time such a thing had happened in the past days. "Have you been unwell?" Teal'c asked.

Daniel Jackson shook his head. "I keep...I can't quite..." He sighed again. "There's something I need to remember and I can't. Something _really_ important."

"It will return to you," Teal'c assured him, though he was confident of no such thing.

"Did you know Jack thinks I Descended on purpose? Sha'uri thinks I wouldn't have given it up. I want to agree with her, but what good did I do while Ascended? I don't know what to think."

"Nor do I," Teal'c admitted. "Ascension is a state that some Jaffa strive for their whole lives to achieve. However...you did appear dissatisfied with the limits imposed upon you. That was what O'Neill believed, and indeed, your actions with regard to Martouf and the Eye of Ra suggested the same."

"Wait," Daniel Jackson said, frowning at him in the dark. "Did you say I _appeared_ dissatisfied to you? Sometime other than the thing with the Eye of Ra?"

A part of Teal'c wished that Daniel Jackson had remembered that dream on his own, partly because it would confirm that it had been more than a dream and partly because it would mean that it had been as important to his friend as it had been to himself. He knew this was unreasonable, though--Daniel Jackson was unable to remember many things, including much of his childhood, which Teal'c suspected were the happiest memories he had. No one understood what Oma Desala or the Others had done to him.

"Are you familiar with the ambush of Kresh'tar?" Teal'c said.

"Um...yes, I read that one," Daniel Jackson said. "You met with other rebel leaders. They were killed, but you passed your symbiote to Bra'tac enough to keep him and yourself alive until SG-1 found you."

"There is something that is not in the report," Teal'c said. "As I lay near death, I began to dream. You used your abilities to appear to me in that dream."

Daniel Jackson straightened and stared at Teal'c. "I did?"

"Indeed," Teal'c said. "When I had sufficiently recovered, you appeared to me again, and that is when I knew: you had stayed with me and watched over me for three days. And that is the reason for which I am eternally grateful to you, Daniel Jackson."

"Wow," Daniel Jackson said. "So you think these things I remember...even though they're hard to believe or imagine..."

"They may be true," Teal'c said. "You were constrained by many limitations while Ascended, but I believe that you did what you could." Daniel Jackson snorted, dissatisfied. "Perhaps you stayed with O'Neill to offer comfort, as you did for me. I am certain you never betrayed who you are."

"It's just... Do you ever wonder if...if you're in the right place? If you're really what people think of you?" He stopped, shaking his head. "Never mind. You're probably not the right person to ask. They just keep talking about things they expect that I can do or what I was, but if I can't... I don't even know what I'm doing anymore."

Teal'c felt his hand try to move toward his symbiote pouch that was no longer a pouch but stopped himself with an effort.

Only months ago, he would not have had to carry medicine like a weakened old man. His symbiote had been his weakness, but it had also given him strength, a mark of who he was. The tretonin had only taken strength from him. The Tau'ri had not yet noticed that he could not lift as much weight as before, or that he tired more easily and wasted more time each day in rest. But one day they would, and if it happened in battle, his weakness would become his team's burden to bear.

"I am beginning to understand what you feel," he said quietly.

"_You_?" Daniel Jackson said.

"I have become more dependent on tretonin than I ever was on my symbiote," Teal'c said. "The symbiote at least depended on me as well."

"What, so because tretonin is a one-way street, it's worse?" Daniel Jackson asked. His brow furrowed, and he laughed uncertainly. "Teal'c, you're still the best warrior the SGC has ever seen, not to mention one of the most knowledgeable and resourceful--"

"Do not," Teal'c said sharply.

Daniel Jackson stopped. "Teal'c?"

Teal'c stood. He did not wish to trouble his friend with his own doubts. "It is late, Daniel Jackson," he said stiffly.

"Whoa--wait," Daniel Jackson said, standing as well, frowning. "What was that? What are you talking about?"

Forcing himself to remain calm--anything else would be only weakness as well--Teal'c said, "It is nothing. We should rest. O'Neill will return with the _teltak_ before sunrise."

"Are you going to _kelno'reem_ inside?" Daniel Jackson said. "Sam and I are staying this way."

"I no longer perform _kelno'reem_," Teal'c said. As much as he had hated his symbiote, he had always been able to take comfort in the peace of _kelno'reem_.

"What--oh," Daniel Jackson said. A look of realization passed over his face, and Teal'c walked past him before he had to answer for it. "_Oh_. Teal'c, hold on. Are you--"

"Major Carter is asleep," Teal'c interrupted before he pulled aside the curtain to their shelter. "You should be as well."

...x...

_**27 June 2003; Nagada Ruins, Abydos; 0300 hrs**_

SG-1 stayed on Abydos with a team of engineers, who worked to devise a more efficient irrigation system while SG-1 and Abydonian volunteers sifted through the ruins of the village. Teal'c assisted as much as he could in packing and loading the hastily collected naquadah and did not react when one of the items O'Neill and Jonas Quinn had brought back from Earth was several more doses of tretonin.

"Just in case," Jonas Quinn said, giving him a tentative smile. "Not that you need it. I mean, you do, obviously, physically, but--"

"Thank you," Teal'c interrupted. He took the drug and returned to work.

Teal'c had expected Daniel Jackson to spend these next days with the people he had known as a child, trying to regain memories or asking what he had missed in the last year. That he was not doing so as much as expected, however, was concerning.

"You think he's been sticking with us now because he's planning to stay here?" Major Carter said worriedly while they worked together, stacking crates of unrefined naquadah and securing them in the cargo hold. "Like he's trying to spend as much time with us as he can before...?" She raised her eyebrows.

But neither was that correct. Daniel Jackson was supposed to have been helping several meters away with Jonas Quinn, but Teal'c could see that he was not paying attention. It took a gentle nudge from Jonas Quinn to startle him back to focus.

"I do not believe that is the case," Teal'c said.

As he began to step out of the cargo bay, however, Major Carter called, "Teal'c, look out!"

Too late, the sound of shifting caught his attention, and he turned to see a large crate sliding from its place on the _teltak_. He reached automatically to catch it, even as Major Carter said, "Don't, what are you--"

He caught the crate easily, but he had not been paying attention and had not seen how heavy it was. It continued falling despite his efforts, and he stumbled to the floor beneath its weight--

Several hands grabbed the edges of the crate, and before long, the weight disappeared. "Teal'c!" O'Neill's voice said as the container rolled onto its side. "You okay, buddy?"

Teal'c sat up and found that he needed a moment to pull breath into his lungs when he had not noticed before that he had lost his breath. "I am fine," he said. O'Neill was there, but so were Jonas Quinn and Daniel Jackson and half of the Abydons who had come to help.

"Yeah, sure," O'Neill said, his tone now angry. "What the hell were you doing? That's solid naquadah in there. It took you and two other men to lift it in the first place!"

"Jack," Daniel Jackson started, "he was just reacting to--"

"He was just going to get himself flattened," O'Neill snapped back. "And why the hell wasn't that strapped down?"

Teal'c pushed himself angrily to his feet, surprised when the floor tilted beneath him. "Careful," Daniel Jackson's voice said as a hand reached for him.

Steadying himself, Teal'c grabbed Daniel Jackson's arm before it could reach him. "Leave me be," he growled.

Two surprised eyes blinked at him. Before anyone could speak further, he pulled roughly away from Daniel Jackson's hand.

"Teal'c, whoa," Major Carter said. "Take it easy."

"Uh...Daniel?" Jonas said. "Hello?"

Ignoring them all, Teal'c turned and strode back outside.

Another hand stopped him before he could return to his work. Teal'c attempted to throw it off again, but O'Neill was more persistent.

"All right," O'Neill said, standing squarely in his way. "Talk."

"There is nothing to say," Teal'c said.

"Don't give me that," O'Neill said.

Even now, Teal'c knew he could hurt any of his human friends if he so wished. He pulled his arm away from O'Neill, but it was quickly grabbed again.

"What's wrong with your arm?" O'Neill said.

Only then did Teal'c realize that there was an ache in his shoulder. "I am fine," he repeated.

"You know how this works," O'Neill said. "If there's something wrong with you, I need to know."

"I am--"

"Fine, yeah, I know," O'Neill finished, the words clipped. He looked over Teal'c once more, then said, "Have one of the medics on SG-8 check you out. Don't--don't give me that eyebrow! I don't need you ripping your arms out while we're here. Don't do any more heavy lifting until you're cleared."

"O'Neill--" Teal'c said before he could go.

"Yeah?"

Teal'c looked past him at SG-1 and several Abydons, all of them working hard, all of them humans and some barely half his weight.

"Teal'c," O'Neill said more quietly, "what's going on with you lately?"

"I have been dishonest with you," Teal'c said. "We are not in battle this day, but if we were, this weakness would be unacceptable."

"You tried to catch a giant, falling box full of naquadah," O'Neill said, sounding exasperated. "That's not weakness--it's..._gravity_. So you strained a muscle or something--anyone else might've been crushed."

"Only months ago," Teal'c said, "such an injury would already have been healed by my symbiote, or nearly so." To humans, he had often seemed extraordinarily strong or courageous; it pained him now to concede that some of that strength and bravery was only a knowledge that his body could withstand injuries that might seriously damage or cripple a human. Without that, and without the physical power in which he had always taken pride...

"Well," O'Neill said. "Yeah. So?"

"In battle, I could no longer guarantee that--"

"Teal'c, for cryin'..." O'Neill interrupted, then stopped and sighed. Pointing a finger toward the edge of their working area, he said, "You need to go see a medic now. Later--before we walk _into battle_--we're gonna have this talk again."

...x...

They returned to the village in the mountains in the evening. After their meal, while others prepared to rest before the next day's work, Daniel Jackson found him inside the part of the cave being used by SG-1 and sat in front of him. "We salvaged a few things from the intact bit of Nagada," he said, holding up a small, clay statue and pointing at a bundle he had been carrying with him. "See?"

"Indeed," Teal'c said.

"It's a little broken," Daniel Jackson said when an arm fell off into his lap. "Everything we found is. Too much wind and such, I guess. See, there used to be a gate around the village--"

"I saw the village gates many times," Teal'c reminded him.

He stilled for a moment. "Right. I knew that."

"Do you plan to take some of these with you when you return to the SGC?" Teal'c asked.

"No. They're not mine." Daniel Jackson shook his head and bundled the items up in the cloth sack again. "The memories belong to the Abydons more than they do to me." Teal'c began to point out that such familiarities might bring back more relevant memories, but Daniel Jackson interrupted. "So," he said. "How's the arm?"

"Fine," Teal'c said.

"Captain Patters said you strained your shoulder. Which I know isn't something you'd normally stop for, but we've got other people working already, and a ship, and no life-or-death situations. So Jack says to take it easy."

"Hm," Teal'c said.

"He said he talked to you. And you said some funny things about your ability to serve, and--"

"And he sent you to talk to me," Teal'c finished.

Daniel Jackson looked embarrassed but said, "Okay, yeah. You know how he is about things like this. Look, I may not remember everything, but I remember enough to know something's been bothering you. It's not just today--it was before that. Jack thinks so, too. So do Sam and Jonas."

"Your concern is unnecessary," Teal'c said, irritated.

"Actually," he said, "we're pretty sure we know what's wrong."

Teal'c scowled. "Then there is no mystery."

"Well, maybe it would help to talk about it," Daniel Jackson said. "Do you want to talk?"

Teal'c looked at him in disbelief, but Daniel Jackson seemed completely earnest. "Perhaps I should ask what has been wrong with _you_ lately," he countered.

"What?" Daniel Jackson said blankly, appearing confused. "What are you--hold on, are you avoiding my question?"

"Indeed," Teal'c said flatly.

Daniel Jackson sighed. "I'm very confused," he said with tightly restrained frustration. "Frankly, I'm confused about a lot of things at the moment, so could you maybe explain..._something_ to me? Anything. Pick a topic." He waited, and when Teal'c didn't answer, he tried, "Is this about the tretonin?"

"I have already explained to you the effects of tretonin," Teal'c said.

"I know the dosing has been settled," Daniel Jackson said. "And in the end, you're still as strong as you were before. You lift pretty much the same weights in the gym and run just as fast, or you would if you weren't always exhausted from not being used to your sleep cycle, and that crate that fell on you today would've fallen whether or not you'd had a symbiote."

But he would been faster if he had had a symbiote. He would barely have noticed any discomfort and would have continued working again immediately. "I was preoccupied."

"Okay, well, you can't blame _that_ on the tretonin. Or..." Daniel Jackson frowned at him. "Or can you? This is really bothering you that much, isn't it?"

"What would you know about it?" Teal'c said quietly.

"Nothing," Daniel Jackson said. "Okay? I understand that I...can't understand. I do know your symbiote was a big part of how you saw yourself, but it doesn't mean that replacing it actually changes who you are as a person."

"You are not truly a student of psychology, Daniel Jackson," Teal'c said. "I do not wish to speak further of this."

"I...wish to speak further about why you think I think I'm a student of psychology," he said, frowning. "Did I tell you that in the dream I invaded?"

Teal'c raised his chin. At times, he forgot that he was the only person to whom that dream had been real. "As I said before, it was not an invasion."

"Meaning 'yes,'" Daniel Jackson said. "Sorry if I'm repeating something I said in the dream, but you thought it was right then, didn't you? Has something changed?"

"Daniel Jackson," Teal'c said, hoping he would stop.

"Do you not call me '_chal'ti_' anymore?" Daniel Jackson asked suddenly. "You used to. I remember that."

Surprised, Teal'c said, "You are becoming too old to be called that, and a _tek'ma'tae_ does not fight alongside his _chal'ti_ as if they were equals." He would feel uneasy calling Daniel Jackson so now, after his friend had guided him through the _m'al sharan_ dream.

"Right," Daniel Jackson said, looking intently at the ground. He seemed about to speak, but then did not.

It did not take long for Teal'c to realize that this was the same thing that had been happening to Daniel Jackson over and over lately--the same perplexed look of concentration, the distraction from everything. "Perhaps you should worry about yourself before being concerned with me," Teal'c suggested.

Daniel Jackson jumped. "What? Oh. S-sorry. You know what, I...I'll leave you alone, then. For now. Just. Please talk to one of us when you're ready."

Teal'c sighed. "Are you all right? You have been exceedingly distracted of late."

"I'm fine." He began to stand, then hesitated and said, "What about your son?"

"Rya'c?" Teal'c said.

"Does he call you _'Tek'ma'tae_?' Or does he call someone else that?"

"I...have not been able to train him myself," Teal'c said. "Bra'tac, perhaps."

Daniel Jackson nodded. "Is he with Bra'tac now?"

"Indeed," Teal'c said. "Why do you ask this?"

Instead, Daniel Jackson rubbed his eyes and said, "I don't know. Just thinking aloud, I guess." And once again, before he left, he sat back down and said, "Do you want to meditate with me tonight?"

"You know that I have discontinued the practice of _kelno'reem_," Teal'c said.

"Well, yeah," he said, "but people meditate when they don't have symbiotes, too. I've always found it useful, even without being able to reach true _kelno'reem_. Well, not always, since I get the feeling I wasn't too good at it, with the whole...staying quiet and--"

"If you wish," Teal'c allowed, "we may meditate together."

"Now?" Daniel Jackson said.

"Can you be silent now?" Teal'c said. Daniel Jackson pressed his lips together, adjusted his seat once more, and closed his eyes.

It had been weeks since Teal'c had tried this. He closed his eyes as well and took a deep breath, ignoring the sounds of the Abydonian people moving around them. Automatically, he reached out to seek harmony with a symbiote that he no longer possessed and found an emptiness where another presence had always been before. He forced himself to pull back and satisfy himself with the more shallow state that humans could achieve.

He could hear Daniel Jackson moving, unable, as always, to be still for the first several minutes until he finally calmed his mind enough. Teal'c remained unmoving and waited for the sounds of shifting to stop before he allowed himself to relax fully, listening only to the familiar sound of Daniel Jackson's steady breathing.

Some time later, he heard the breathing change rhythm.

Teal'c thought nothing of it at first--while in _kelno'reem_, it was easy to be aware of such slight disturbances, but he had watched over Daniel Jackson often and knew that it was difficult at the best of times for a young human who thought too much to calm his mind for so many minutes at a time.

However, instead of returning its previous rhythm, Daniel Jackson's breathing only became more unsettled. Teal'c opened his eyes to see Daniel Jackson's eyes squeezed tightly shut, his brow wrinkled, his hands clenched tightly on his knees.

"Daniel Jackson?" Teal'c said. There was no answer. "Daniel Jackson!"

With a gasp, Daniel Jackson's eyes snapped open. He looked around himself wildly, then leapt to his feet. "I--I need to..."

Teal'c rose as well, holding out an arm to restrain him. "Are you all right?"

Daniel Jackson looked at him for the first time. "Teal'c," he said. "I think Rya'c is in danger."

XXXXX

_**27 June 2003; Kalima, Abydos; 1800 hrs**_

"You think Teal'c and Daniel are done talking now?" Carter said.

Jack checked his watch. "Probably," he said. The advantage of sending Daniel to straighten out Teal'c's head was that Teal'c would get a chance to try and straighten out Daniel's in return. "Actually, we should all get back to them and turn in for the night. There's still a lot of work to be done." Looking into the next room, he called, "Jonas, curfew!"

Jonas looked up from where he had been examining one of the quern-stones someone used for grinding flour for bread each day. "Yes, sir," he said, slipping out of the workroom. "You know, these caves could actually provide some good protection--better than being in the open and protected by wooden gates, frankly, and there are plenty of places to hide or set up a defense if a Goa'uld _does_ come back."

"Don't tell _them_ it's better they've had to uproot and start over," Carter said.

"Right," Jonas said, looking around as if afraid someone had heard and would be offended. "No, I didn't mean... I think they'll get along all right, that's all."

"They're a tough people," Jack said, thinking of the boys who had helped him and his team fight off Ra. "They'll make it, with or without us. Maybe it'll even be better not to be associated with Earth anymore in the galactic eye--too many complications." Earth hadn't directly done anything major to Abydos except Ra, but Heru-ur, Apophis, and Anubis had all come to poke around after that. It was only a matter of time before someone decided to make an example out of Abydos.

Before any of them could leave, though, he heard the sound of footsteps pounding on rock and Daniel's voice calling, "Jack! _Jack_! Sam!"

Jack hurried out of the cave they were in, and Daniel barely stopped in time to avoid barreling into all of them. "What happened?" he said, taking in the wide eyes.

"O'Neill!" Teal'c called, a few steps behind.

"What's going on?" Carter said. "Teal'c?"

"I do not know," Teal'c said, looking worried. "He spoke of--"

"Rya'c," Daniel said. "Um. And Bra'tac. They're in...somewhere...a planet. A-a prison or something. With a lot of other Jaffa. Someone's making them work, and there's..." He paused, squeezing his eyes shut, and said, "A ship. It's floating. They're working naquadah, and some of them are getting sick, and there are two moons, and they're building a ship--"

"Whoa, whoa, okay," Jack interrupted, holding up his hands. Daniel stuttered to a stop. Looking at Teal'c, he asked, "What are you talking about? How do you know--"

"I was there!" Daniel said. "I was standing right there, watching them, and I couldn't do--"

"From when you were Ascended?" Jonas said.

With a jolt, Jack remembered sitting in a prison with Daniel standing there and watching but not able to do anything. Perhaps Daniel was remembering that, too, because his eyes flicked toward Jack once and then away. "I think so."

"So, some sort of forced labor camp," Jonas said. "Maybe they were caught while recruiting. Do you know where? Did you recognize the planet?"

Daniel swallowed. "You--you believe me?"

"I've believed more for less," Jack said. "Do you know where they are or not?"

"No," Daniel said. "I don't recognize anything I saw there. Except...Jack, it's Ba'al. The ones in charge wear his mark."

Jack carefully suppressed the intense desire to find Ba'al and squeeze the life out of him. Or run away and hide. Neither was a viable possibility. "Doesn't matter," he said. "We'll figure this out and get them back. When's the last time we had any contact with Rya'c and Bra'tac?"

"Less than four months ago," Teal'c said.

"And Daniel Descended over a month ago," Carter added, "so they've been there between one-and-a-half and four months. If we knew where...who might know where they've been going?"

"Rak'nor is likely to know," Teal'c said.

"Then we have to go back to the SGC," Daniel said. "Jack, we're stranded here on Abydos--we need a Stargate to do anything. We have to leave, now."

Jack nodded. "All right. Teal'c, Carter, go get the _teltak_ ready. Jonas, Daniel, you two go back to where we're staying, gather any essential gear, and bring it to the ship. I'll tell Sha'uri and Kasuf we're going back to the SGC but SG-8 will stay and we'll be back when we're done. And we'll take one other person who can fly the ship back here after dropping us off. Move it."

...x...

Skaara volunteered to fly them to the SGC and back, for the simple reason that he actually knew how to fly a Goa'uld cargo ship from the many times he had done it as Klorel. Jack had forgotten that not every SG team member had learned to fly Goa'uld ships--particularly on support teams like SG-8--so, with Sha'uri's blessing and a promise that nothing bad would happen to Skaara this time, they lifted off.

Daniel spent the first hour on the ship perched on top of a crate full of glassy naquadah and furiously sketched everything he remembered from his brief vision. Then he sat completely still, frowning at his feet. Compared to how jumpy he'd been on Abydos, this was more familiar--not exactly calm, but rather the look he had often worn before an important mission when he had been unhappy about something.

Teal'c spent most of the time pacing in his slow, deliberate way that promised violence in the near future. Jack was tempted to tell him to stop making everyone nervous, but the image of one's son being worked to death in a forced labor camp probably trumped just about anything anyone could say.

"I'm sure he's all right," Jack tried.

Teal'c scowled.

"He's with Bra'tac," Jonas offered. "That's gotta count for a lot."

"Bra'tac would've planned for the unexpected," Carter said. "He should have enough tretonin for a couple of months, and I'm sure he'd know to stretch it out once he stumbled into trouble."

Teal'c stopped, turned around, and paced in the other direction.

"I should have said something sooner," Daniel muttered from his perch on their explosive cargo as Skaara appeared at the bulkhead and joined them.

"Ah, give it up," Jack said. He pointed out, "It's a wonder you remembered at all," which made Teal'c tense even more.

Daniel dropped his head into his hands. "I'm still missing something else," he said. "Something about an incoming wormhole to base."

"To base?" Carter repeated, bending to pick up Daniel's sketches. "Have we been to that planet?"

"Or someone on that planet tried to get to _us_," Jonas said.

"Bra'tac," Teal'c said.

"But you have an iris," Skaara pointed out.

"Well, maybe he tried to radio a message since he didn't have a GDO?" Jonas suggested.

Carter shook her head. "We definitely would've noticed if a message had gotten through. And if he didn't manage to send the message before he was cut off, there's not a lot of information we can get from records of an incoming wormhole."

"I just stood there," Daniel said in a low voice, almost to himself, still scowling at his hands.

"If you could've done something while you were all glowy," Jack said, "you would've. Now everyone calm down--that includes you, Teal'c."

"My son--" Teal'c started.

"I get it!" Jack snapped. "Sit down."

Teal'c gave him a long look and finally sat stiffly.

"When we get back," Jack said, "we'll give Skaara a Tollan long-range communicator so we can call Abydos and get a ride back afterward. Teal'c will find Rak'nor, and Carter and Daniel can start looking through wormhole records while Jonas and I...try to make ourselves useful. There's nothing we can do now. Any questions?" he added, meaning that the discussion was over.

"No, sir," Carter answered for all of them, meaning that the message was taken.

"Good." Jack turned to Skaara and firmly changed the subject. "So. How's the fiancée?"

Finally, Daniel raised his head and turned to his brother. Skaara was already looking back and gave him a regretful, knowing smile before he answered. Jack let Skaara chatter about his wife-to-be and watched out of the corner of his eye as Daniel looked away.


	17. Part V: The Journey Home, 3 of 4

**Part V (cont'd)**

_**28 June 2003; SGC, Earth; 1000 hrs**_

They reached Earth, returned to the SGC, and sent Skaara home, and by the time Teal'c brought Rak'nor back to help, Carter and Daniel were still browsing through the records.

"I've gone through everything from the last four months," Daniel said when Jack found him there. "I'm going through outgoing wormholes, too, just to make sure, but there's nothing."

"Rak'nor's here," Jack told him. "Let's see if he has anything for us."

Daniel blinked, then stood quickly and ran into the briefing room.

By the time they caught up, Rak'nor was already staring at a hectic sketch. "...a ship being built," Daniel was saying. "It wasn't completed, but it was already in the air, so there must have been some sort of...floating...mechanism. Or maybe it was suspended on something..."

"Goa'uld ships are sometimes built on antigravity platforms," Carter suggested.

"That would work. I think most of the prisoners were refining naquadah for the construction."

Rak'nor raised his eyes from the sketch, looking alarmed. "I know the planet which you describe," he said. "Erebus." Teal'c stiffened, clearly recognizing the name as well.

"Erebus," Daniel repeated. "That sounds...pretty bad. It's from Greek mythology."

"Condemned souls pass through there after death," Jonas said, exchanging a grim look with him.

"Then it is aptly named," Rak'nor said. "The planet is used for the construction of _hatak_ vessels and the purification of naquadah to build them. Only Jaffa prisoner labor is used--only they can stand the intense heat and toxic gases of the blast furnaces fed by underground volcanic systems. Eventually, even the Jaffa succumb."

"I am aware of such places," Teal'c said, nodding. "Where Jaffa prisoners of war unwilling to serve a new Goa'uld master are taken to be worked to death."

"Which would make it the perfect place to recruit rebels," Jonas said, "but something must have gone wrong."

"The planet was recently taken by Ba'al," Rak'nor said.

"That fits, too," Daniel said. "They were definitely Ba'al's forces."

Hammond nodded. "While you were away," he told them, "Korra of the Tok'ra told us that Yu lost control of the System Lords' alliance. Rumor has it that there was a lot of unrest, and Yu's own First Prime surrendered what he commanded of the armies to Ba'al, the strongest of the other System Lords."

"So now Ba'al is not only in control of the prison world where Bra'tac and Rya'c are stuck," Jack said, "but he's also in control of the four remaining Eyes."

"At least most Goa'uld ships aren't configured to use the Eyes properly," Daniel said absently as he filled in something on his sketch. "The circuits aren't designed to handle that much power."

Confused, Jack started to ask just how the hell he knew anything about Goa'uld circuitry or how the Eyes worked, but, to his surprise, Carter held out a hand to stop him before he could speak. "But if Ba'al knew how to use the Eyes," she said casually, though her gaze was intent, "he could build a ship that _does_ support them."

Daniel shrugged. "He could be adapting that ship they're building on Erebus to handle...the...to handle..." Suddenly, he stopped and looked up. "What?"

"What?" Jack said.

But Carter was coiled tight with either excitement or anxiety. "Sirs, it's possible those slaves are building a ship that can use the Eyes as a weapon," she said. "Which means that the stakes just got higher--Rya'c and Bra'tac aside, we need to shut down construction on that ship."

"What?" Jack repeated. "Where did all of this come from?" Jonas pointed to Daniel's head. Daniel slapped his finger away. "Ah," he said.

Hammond had the resigned expression that meant he wasn't certain they were all sane, but he was going to go along with it, anyway. "Is it possible the four Eyes will actually be there?"

Jack turned to Daniel, who said defensively, "What?"

"It's possible, sir," Jack said. "If security on that planet is good enough, Ba'al could be keeping the Eyes there with the ship."

"The security is more than sufficient," Rak'nor said. "However, that makes this mission all but impossible."

"Why?" Daniel said.

"The _chaapa'ai_ on Erebus is impenetrable," Rak'nor said. "A force field much like your iris blocks it, making attack or rescue through it impossible."

"Well, someone must get through _somehow_," Carter pointed out.

"We believe a signal must be used to lower the force field," Rak'nor said. At the edge of his sight, Jack saw Daniel twitch minutely, then close his eyes. "But we have no way of knowing what that signal is."

"Daniel?" Jack asked warily. This was the kind of crap he really hated to deal with, but after seeing various people turn into light or remember a symbiote's thoughts or tell the future or make things move with their minds...well, it wasn't something he was going to ignore, either.

Even as the others' attention fell on him, Daniel's eyes flew open. "The Alpha Site," he said, backing toward the stairs that lead toward the control room. "The incoming wormhole I was remembering...it wasn't to the SGC. They--they attacked the Jaffa guarding the 'gate. Bra'tac dialed the Alpha Site and sent a signal that lowered the force field--he must've been hoping to get through without having to worry about our iris, but they were recaptured first. But the deactivation signal might have gotten through."

"Major Carter, check the Alpha Site records," Hammond said.

"Yes, sir," Carter said, and sat back down at the computer, Daniel hovering impatiently behind her.

Rak'nor eyed Daniel in confusion, clearly with no idea what to make of this. "Long story," Jack said. "Not important right now."

"Come on, it has to be here!" Daniel snapped from the next room. Jack descended the stairs and joined them.

Carter held up a hand. "Just give me a minute," she said.

Jonas gave Jack an apprehensive look. "Now you know how _we_ felt for five years," Jack said.

"Shh," Daniel told him.

"You don't even know what you're looking at," Jack answered, gesturing at the records scrolling rapidly down the screen.

"Sam does," he retorted.

Sure enough, Carter said, "Here. A coded energy signal was received and recorded through the Alpha Site 'gate three months ago. It was analyzed but no one was able to determine its origin or its purpose."

"It's the deactivation code for the force field," Daniel said confidently.

"Are you sure?" Carter asked.

"I am _sure_," Daniel insisted.

"I can synthesize this energy signature," she said. "So...I can get us through the 'gate on Erebus."

Teal'c turned to the general as Daniel added, "And I can provide details of the defenses."

"Do it," the general said, pointing back toward the briefing room. "I'll call in SG-3 to join you in the meantime. If you can find those Eyes and salvage them..."

"Could you teach us how to use them?" Jonas asked Daniel.

"No," Daniel said, frowning. "Why would I know that?" Jack raised his eyebrows. "I don't know. I have no idea."

"Getting them out of the System Lords' possession will be your first priority," the general decided. "Bring them back if you can. If you can't, destroy them."

...x...

"O'Neill," Teal'c said just before they all went through, "I wish to tell you that I believe I may be a liability on this mission."

"Still having problems with your shoulder?" Jack asked absently as he adjusted the gun in his grip.

"No," Teal'c said.

Jack looked up, hoping this would turn out to be some kind of twisted joke, which, of course, it was not. "You're not a liability, Teal'c."

"If I should die, it is my wish that you watch over Rya'c," Teal'c said insistently.

It was only because Teal'c seemed so dead serious that Jack said, "Well...let's see it doesn't come to that."

...x...

_**28 June 2003; Erebus; 2300 hrs**_

Jack had wondered, sometimes, how Daniel had been able to sit there and watch Ba'al torture him and not do anything.

Logically, fine, he got it now. The Others would've rained some serious mayhem on them, but Daniel wasn't someone who did logical things in emotional situations like that. He hadn't been, anyway, until he'd Ascended and apparently decided that he couldn't justify allowing certain ends to pass, no matter _what_ the means. Jack decided it was another reason to be pissed off at the Others, and sometimes he wondered which Daniel they'd sent back--the one who would ruthlessly order untrained boys into battle, knowing he was sending them to die, or the one who would act impulsively, sometimes stupidly, in the name of justice.

It wasn't right. Jack had trained Daniel to accept those kinds of decisions when necessary, but making that call had never been Daniel's job; it was Jack's.

As they crouched in the dark, somewhere in the distance, Teal'c muffled a grunt of pain. "Colonel..." Jonas breathed from one side of him.

"Quiet," Jack ordered.

"Sir," Carter said, crawling back toward them from her side of the ridge.

"Hold your position," Jack whispered harshly.

"We're just going to sit here?" Daniel whispered from the other side, his gaze boring into Jack as they heard the sound of the whip again.

_You just sat there_, Jack thought. _You should know exactly how I feel._ "Yes," he said. "We're just going to sit here til we can find another way in." He wasn't too worried about Carter and Daniel--they might not like it, but they knew it was sometimes necessary to sit back even when a friend was being tortured if it meant a way out for all of them. They'd learned that the hard way on Bedrosia. Jonas was the wild card here, and for all Jack had come to trust in the man's abilities and even his judgment, he was still inexperienced when it came to direct combat.

Well. Everyone had to learn sometime.

Jonas twitched and braced himself when the whip whistled through the air again, as if waiting for a scream that never came.

As Jack looked around, searching for another way, Carter said quietly, "They've sent a search party. They must suspect more of us--especially if they recognize Teal'c."

"We'll just have to stay out of sight, then," Jack said absently.

"We need a distraction," Jonas said. "Set off a bunch of grenades or something and then run in and grab Teal'c. And we can use _that_ as a distraction to take out the mothership."

To Jack's surprise, it was Daniel who said, "Not yet."

"Not _yet_?" Jonas said, his expression accusing. He might be friendly with Daniel, but they hadn't fought beside each other before.

"Not while they're literally _holding_ onto Teal'c," Daniel snapped back, glaring at Jonas as if to say that no one had better even _hint_ that he would have said that if there had been a better way. "Wait until they stop and leave him for morning. _That's_ when we move."

Jack winced as the whip fell again. "Yeah," he agreed, "but we still need a distraction. Grenades aren't gonna cut it. I was thinking of something"--a glint caught his eye, and he turned to see the half-completed mothership hovering in the air. "...bigger. Anyone have an idea what security's gonna be like on that ship?"

Carter shook her head. "Probably a few ground troops, an alarm of some sort if we break in. Even if not, if we can cause enough damage to _raise_ an alarm, it'll be pretty distracting, sir."

Looking around, Jack counted the people he had with them and said, "All right, you three"--he pointed to Carter, Jonas, and Daniel--"head toward the ship as soon as they're done with Teal'c. Look for any Eyes and then give us that distraction. We'll cover you on your way back. SG-3, spread out and set up along this ridge."

XXXXX

_**29 June 2003; Erebus; 0600 hrs**_

"All right," Sam whispered, checking once more to make sure there really were exactly two Jaffa guarding the ring transporter under the mothership. She gestured for Daniel and Jonas to join her and waited until she heard both sets of soft footsteps approach. She held up a hand to signal to them behind her, _'On three. Me left; you right. One--'_

A zat gun discharged just to the left of her, and another right over her head. The two Jaffa dropped to the ground.

Sam jumped, whirling around, then glared when she saw Daniel retracting his zat and Jonas looking guilty. "We counted," Daniel whispered, pointing between himself and Jonas. "You weren't looking."

Jonas gave her a grin, then moved past both of them and bent to find the ring activation device from one of the fallen Jaffa.

The colonel was going to go nuts with these two. Daniel had been bad enough on his own, but this was getting ridiculous now that he'd found a coconspirator, and it was only going to encourage Jonas to start stretching the rules more. In fact...

At the moment, the two of them were digging through the Jaffa's armor, each furiously searching one of the two fallen guards. "What--what are you...?" Sam said, raising her gun to watch their backs, since they were clearly too busy to watch anything that wasn't in front of their noses.

"One of us is supposed to stay here and keep watch while the other one goes with you," Jonas explained, wrinkling his nose as he reached past his Jaffa's breastplate.

"Where's the activator?" Daniel said. "Ah--dammit, my watch is stuck in his armor--"

"Got it!" Jonas said, standing and raising the ring device. "I'm going in."

"Damn," Daniel repeated and finally extracted his hand from behind a plate of retractable armor. "Fine, I'll stand guard. Hand it over."

"What is wrong with you two?" Sam hissed. "This isn't a game!"

Daniel turned toward her, all trace of friendly competition gone. One of the Jaffa on the ground began to stir. Before Sam could move, Daniel raised his zat and shot the man a second time. Jonas jumped a little, staring at the corpse.

"We know that," Daniel said, then tucked away his zat and pulled his P90 around into his hands.

Sam gaped at him for a moment, trying to quash that feeling she'd kept having recently, the one that said something had been just a little _off_ about Daniel ever since he'd come back from his stint as an Ascended being. They didn't have time to explore it now, though, so she took a breath and stepped onto the ring platform. Jonas joined her and wordlessly tossed the device at Daniel.

"If we don't contact you in fifteen seconds, assume we were caught," she said. "Stay sharp."

With a nod, Daniel stepped back, already taking off his pack, and activated the rings.

The white light of the ring transporter faded around them. Footsteps clanked toward them, and she ducked into a side passageway, checking to make sure Jonas had found cover before pressing herself against the wall.

A line of Jaffa walked past them. Sam waited until they were gone, then gestured for Jonas to follow. "We're in," she said.

_"Good luck,"_ Daniel answered in their ears.

"The Eyes should be near the engine room," she said. Unless they were otherwise locked up, but they'd worry about that if the first try failed. "This way?"

Jonas squinted, calling to mind the dozens of ship layouts particular to each System Lord that he'd memorized, then whispered, "This isn't standard design. It's new."

Sam looked around, picturing what the ship looked like from the outside and trying to decide which way made most sense--where the best place for centralized circuits would be, where security would be tightest on a lackadaisically guarded ship, where power had to be drawn from... "Let's try this way."

The corridors were sparsely manned, apparently under the assumption that the shield on the 'gate would hold most enemies at bay. Despite a wrong turn, it didn't take long for them to find the weapons control panels next to the control room.

Sam looked around the control room. "I can't believe they're not guarding this place--" she started, stepping inside, then had to clench her jaw around a yell of pain as a force shield threw her back with a loud thump.

"Sam Sam Sam, c'mon," Jonas whispered, grabbing her by the arm and helping her up. "Someone must've heard that."

They had just ducked back behind a bulwark when a line of Jaffa ran past. Sam took a deep breath and tried to rub feeling back into her tingling arms. She peeked out and saw one of the Jaffa pull out a handheld device, deactivate the shield, and walk inside the room. Four--no, five Jaffa, and footsteps coming around the corner...

From the other side of the wall they were hiding behind, Jonas waved frantically at her.

'_Eyes_,' he mouthed, then pointed into the room. Sam peeked out again, but couldn't see from her angle. '_Panel,_' Jonas mouthed, nodding to show that he was very certain. '_Behind_.' He raised his gun a few inches and raised his eyebrows in question.

Sam's hand clenched on her weapon, too--the shield was down now, which made this the perfect time for them to get in--but then dropped it and shook her head. They were too outnumbered to do anything but keep out of sight. _Stay down_, she signaled. Jonas nodded and lowered his gun.

One of the Jaffa barked an order. Sam heard the sound of buttons being pressed, and then the distinctive, metallic footsteps stomped away again. She looked around the bulwark, saw no one, and finally stepped out. "What'd they say?" she whispered.

"The Eyes are safe," Jonas answered, looking anxiously into the control room. "They're starting a sweep of the ship for any intruders. Sam, if we can bring down the force shield..."

Sam looked around for the panel that controlled the shield. She hesitated before touching it, but then realized that, if they lacked experience in direct confrontation against Ba'al, Ba'al also lacked it against them. A Jaffa intruder or rebellious slave would try to enter a sealed room by force; SG personnel had learned to work around Goa'uld force by either stealth or engineering.

She quickly pulled the panel out of the wall, smiling grimly when it came out with little resistance and no additional alarm. "They're routing a lot of power to here," she said, studying the circuit. "It'll take some time to--"

The faint sound of gunfire came through her earpiece. "Daniel?" Jonas said, alarmed.

_"I'm fine,"_ Daniel said, whispering. _"Just a stray patrol, but hurry. More Jaffa will have heard that."_

Sam bit back a curse. "Daniel, we've found the Eyes. If I get them back to the SGC, can you remember how to use them?"

_"I don't know."_

"Guess!"

There was a pause, and then, _"Can you destroy them?"_

_But they're powerful Goa'uld technology_, she wanted to say. _We could learn so much from them. _Instead, she said, "I think we can, but I'd rather not. Can you keep any patrols off our backs?"

_"Sam,"_ Daniel said, his voice tense, _"you should just destroy them. I probably won't remember anything about them, anyway."_

She grimaced, but they were on a timetable here and Teal'c was hurt, so she reached into her bag for enough C-4 to make as big a hole as possible around here. "Okay--stand by," she told Daniel, then released the talk button. "Pull out the power regulator and try to overload the shields," she said to Jonas, pointing to the right panel as she started planting explosives. "With luck, that alone will take out a lot in the control room; if not, it should at least work as a primer for the C-4, and that'll should do the trick."

Jonas squinted at the panel in the dark as Sam pressed plastique into the walls, as close as she could get to the room without touching the shield again. By the time she turned around, Jonas was replacing the panel in the wall. "That should give us a few minutes," he said. "I say five at most, less if they turn on some of these systems. If that blows a big enough hole, we might not even need to get rid of the antigravity panel."

"Let's hope so, 'cause I don't think we've got time to find the antigravity controls," she said. A few minutes, he'd estimated, and without time to check his work, she accepted the guess and set her watch for three minutes.

They had to hide from two more groups of passing guards as they went, and by the time they had almost reached the ring transporter, there was barely a minute left. Just as they'd almost reached the platform, though, another line of guards came into view. This time, they didn't leave--Sam counted six Jaffa, all standing at the ready by the rings.

"This could be a problem," she murmured. A glance over her shoulder showed Jonas crouched at the other wall, his expression asking her what to do next. Her watch said that the power feedback loop had been set two and a half minutes ago. They couldn't just wait it out--she had no idea to gauge just how big the explosion (or explosions) would be when it went, so they had to be as far away as possible and definitely not _on_ the ship itself.

Six against two was bad odds, even with the Jaffa mostly pinned at the end of a corridor--there was still one passageway going off in either direction where they could take cover, and as soon as a fight started, reinforcements wouldn't be far behind. If they could be sure that all six Jaffa would stay relatively clustered in one place, though, more than they were now, then automatic gunfire might win over the slower staff weapons.

Actually...

If someone came up the rings unannounced, the Jaffa would turn their weapons onto the platform, which meant that they'd all have to stand facing the same way to avoid each other's fire. More than that, they'd stand with their backs to Sam and Jonas, hoping to pin any enemies against the wall on the other side, not knowing that there were SG personnel in the open corridor behind them.

"Daniel, what's your situation?" Sam said quietly.

_"I'm waiting,"_ he answered._ "What's going on?"_

"On my word, I want an empty ring activation," she said, so quietly she had to hope he could decipher her whispered words. "Follow in five seconds. You'll arrive in the middle of a firefight. I count six hostile Jaffa, so stay low--get out of the way. Stand facing camp so you'll come up facing us with your back to the hull. Do you copy?"

_"Solid copy,"_ Daniel answered smartly, with the almost-careless tone in the face of mortal peril that the colonel had never been able to drill out of him. _"Face camp; dummy ring activation; five count; then ring up and move. Say the word, Sam."_

Sam let herself smile--this felt just like any of a dozen training scenarios they'd gone through together--then squashed it as she pulled her focus back, moved her finger into her trigger guard and looked back again. Jonas raised his gun and nodded once.

_"Jonas, don't think,"_ Daniel added. _"Don't try to wound. You aim and shoot to kill."_

"Got it," Jonas whispered, focusing hard on the end of the corridor.

Only when she heard the quick exchange did Sam wonder if that seemingly-childish scramble for the ring activation device back on the ground had been exactly for this reason--Jonas didn't know Daniel's style in battle but trusted his reputation; all Daniel knew was that Jonas winced when someone got shot and hadn't been carrying live firearms in the field for very long. Maybe he'd been trying to protect the newer member of the team, and _that_ was just too much to think about while they were on a ship with live explosives ticking down.

Sam brought her gun to her shoulder and ordered, "Now."

The rings activated.

"_Kree lo'sek!_" one Jaffa called, and, as Sam had hoped, they gathered together, facing the empty rings.

_"...two...three..."_ Daniel counted in their ears.

Sam shot the first man in the back. Another fell at the same time--courtesy of Jonas, who fired more bullets but made sure at least a few struck home--and she moved to the next target, assessing the scene as she did. "Daniel, move left immediately," she ordered over the sound of her gun--the Jaffa still standing had spun around once they realized someone was behind them, and they were taking cover in a side passageway.

_"Five!"_

The rings activated again. As a Jaffa started to turn, Sam stuck her head deliberately out into the corridor, opening fire and hoping to draw their attention just a little longer. Of the three Jaffa left, one of them was too well-hidden to hit, but from her angle, she managed to wound one more before scrambling back.

"Check fire!" she called to Jonas, watching for Daniel.

Daniel appeared and immediately threw himself to the side, taking himself out of Sam and Jonas's line of fire ("Now," she ordered, raising her gun again) and already returning fire back into the other side passage. Sam saw the one Jaffa out of her range drop. Jonas took the last one as she hurried forward and saw Daniel stand and finish off the man she'd wounded earlier.

"Sam..." Jonas said, running behind her. "It's gonna go any second now!"

"Get on the platform!" Daniel called, already there. "I hear more coming this way--"

She pushed his head down and stood guard over him as he reset the ring activation device. "Not yet..." she said. Jonas skidded into them, turning as he did to aim at a Jaffa guard following them. "Go!"

They landed back outside. "They'll be right behind us!" Daniel hissed, already running toward the ridge opposite where Colonel O'Neill and SG-3 were.

"Run, run, head for camp!" she told him, urging him forward with her fingertips and glancing back once to make sure Jonas was right behind. The sound of rings activating came from behind him, and Sam grabbed his arm and gave it a tug. "Follow Daniel," she told him, exchanging places with him at the rear to aim at the Jaffa appearing on the ring platform.

Still moving backward as fast as she could while holding her gun steady, she squeezed the trigger, just enough to make the Jaffa scatter near the ship and give her time to turn and try to outrun them.

An alarm sounded on the ship. The Jaffa in the camp turned almost as one toward the commotion. A few turned and started up the ridge to investigate.

_"Carter, was that you?"_ Colonel O'Neill's voice said through her earpiece.

Reminded of other times when they'd had to hijack Goa'uld systems to cause an explosion, Sam sped up and keyed the radio. "Here it comes, sir. Daniel, Jonas, it's--"

The explosion made her duck, looking up immediately as her companions stumbled but kept going.

She glanced back to see the entire mothership wobble in midair, smoke rising from a hole in the hull and debris floating madly, held in place by the antigravity platform. The Jaffa slavers dropped what they were doing and sprinted toward the wreckage, yelling orders.

"Keep moving, faster," Sam said, still following Daniel and Jonas as they ran along the ridge, but Jaffa were running out in every direction now, including theirs, and in five seconds there was going to be more than a handful of hostiles in range of them. "Colonel, request cover fire _now_--"

The Jaffa party closest to reaching them exploded.

_"Have at 'em, boys!"_ Colonel O'Neill whooped. Sam reached the top of their side of the ridge and dropped down next to Daniel, Jonas crouching on her other side. Turning briefly toward SG-3 and the colonel on the far side of the camp, she saw a mortar in place, still firing shells.

Below them, there was a full-fledged melee breaking out. Teal'c and Rak'nor--or maybe Bra'tac and Rya'c--must have rallied the prisoners to fight back. "Clean targets," she reminded, raising her gun. "We've got a lot of friendlies."

She found her first target and fired, not pausing to see if he was dead or only wounded before she moved on. Just as she was about to try another, a bullet struck from the other side--she glanced up to see Colonel O'Neill in the distance, his gun already trained on someone else.

When nothing sounded on either side of her, though, she remembered that she was with Daniel and Jonas, not Teal'c and the colonel. Daniel looked like he'd picked out a target but wasn't sure enough to shoot, while Jonas's finger wasn't even near his trigger. Neither of them was even close to being a confident sniper at this distance with so many rebel Jaffa clustered around.

"Daniel, take the ones who get separated from the rebels," she ordered, snapping her fingers to catch their attention and pointing at a few who looked like they were trying to flee up the ridge. "Jonas, double back to the ship, make sure no one comes at us from there."

Immediately, Jonas stood and ran back toward the ship. Daniel dropped more comfortably into his crouch and shifted his aim, and this time, his bullets sounded beside hers.

By the time she finally found Teal'c through her scope, he was already standing over the dead body of the Jaffa who had been beating him the night before. Sam allowed herself a moment to be relieved that he was upright--that was always a good sign. Bra'tac and Rya'c joined him, all three of them wielding staff weapons, and Sam turned to search for another target.

"Sam, it's me," Daniel said, and she was still so used to the tone that she didn't even think of twitching away when his hand touched her back to warn her he was doing something, then snaked around to take extra ammunition from her. Shifting slightly to help when the magazine caught on her belt seemed so natural it was almost as if they'd drilled shoulder-to-shoulder just yesterday, not a year and a half ago.

"No one's alive that way," Jonas said, a little breathless, as he ran back to them. "Ship's clean."

_"Carter, get the evacuation started,"_ Colonel O'Neill said.

Sam eyed the chaos under them and didn't move, instead raising her gun again to continue helping from here. "Jonas, dial the Alpha Site, send the code, and warn them we've got incoming. Daniel, round up the Jaffa, then catch up to Jonas."

Both of them slithered away from her. She took her eye away from the camp long enough to see Daniel covering Jonas as he ran past the enemy and toward the Stargate.

"_Jaffa!_" Daniel yelled, barely loud enough over the noise. He ran closer. "_Re--_" He paused to duck a staff blast, then immediately returned fire.

But Teal'c must have heard, because he took over, his voice easily carrying with decades of experience as a field commander. _"Kree Jaffa!_" he yelled as Sam left her position and ran toward Daniel."_Re hano Tau'ri! _Rak'nor!"

"_Re hano Tau'ri!_" Rak'nor repeated, and ran from his post to lead the Jaffa toward Daniel.

_"Bradio!_" Daniel called, slipping into the Goa'uld-English-Abydonian hybrid he often used with Teal'c. "Teal'c, we'll cover you--_krel lak, nok_!"

Sam saw Teal'c push Rya'c toward the crowd of fleeing Jaffa before she reached a position opposite Daniel. Most of the hostiles left were trying to retreat more than anything--there were still bullets raining on them, and plenty of the prisoners weren't content to stop short of revenge in favor of running.

Waiting for Teal'c, Bra'tac, and Rya'c to stagger past them, she planted herself at the back of the line of rebels. "Daniel, go," she ordered, turning back to the camp to make sure no one followed.

"Yes, ma'am," he said absently before he sprinted off and let her watch his back. She could get used to this.

...x...

Jonas was supporting Teal'c gingerly by the arm as Rya'c stumbled toward a waiting stretcher to lower Bra'tac onto it.

"Teal'c?" Sam said as she stepped out onto the ramp in the SGC.

"I will be fine," Teal'c said tiredly.

General Hammond looked around, waiting for Colonel O'Neill to walk out of the wormhole as well before he said, "Welcome back, SG-1."

"The camp has been liberated," the colonel reported, waving at the sergeant in the window to stop holding the 'gate open. The iris closed, and the wormhole fizzled away. "The prisoners followed SG-3 back to the Alpha Site."

"They are anxious to join the rebellion," Rak'nor added, looking satisfied.

Bra'tac raised his head before Janet could order someone to wheel him away. "Then my mission was a success," he said. "Hammond of Texas--it seems I am once again in your debt."

Hammond smiled. "I think it's Mr. Jackson you owe on this one," he said.

Daniel froze in the middle of handing his gun to an airman. "Indeed," Teal'c said, glancing first at Rya'c and nodding once. Daniel looked at Sam, then turned back to Teal'c and bowed very slightly in answer.

The Jaffa walked (or were forced) toward the infirmary. "I've already sent a message to Abydos," Hammond said when SG-1 tried to follow. "I expect someone will be here to take you back and finish up there in less than ten hours."

Sam blinked. She'd all but forgotten that they'd been in the middle of another mission when a memory had kicked them into this one. By the expressions on the others' faces, they were thinking the same.

"Ah...right, sir," the colonel said. "Abydos. Well...Teal'c should probably sit this one out."

"They should be finishing up on Abydos before too long," Hammond said. "I'm sure Teal'c won't mind a little rest."

"Yes, sir," the colonel said.

"Why don't you go talk to him in the infirmary," the general suggested. "Dr. Fraiser has some supplies to send back to Abydos, too. Mr. Jackson, I need to speak with you before you go."

Daniel nodded. "Yes, sir," he said, and followed the general to his office.

Sam glanced back at him once, then followed the rest of them to the infirmary. "Everyone else okay?" she asked.

"Yup," Jonas said, fairly bouncing along the hallway, despite being exhausted and out of breath.

"_Now_ what are you smiling about?" the colonel said, turning to him.

Jonas beamed. "Blew up my first mothership," he said happily. Sam rolled her eyes but couldn't help returning his grin.

XXXXX

_**29 June 2003; SGC, Earth; 1200 hrs**_

"You're not injured, Mr. Jackson?" the general said as they stepped inside the office.

"No, sir," Daniel said. He hesitated for a moment, then amended the report Jack had quickly given between Teal'c's wounds and incoming Jaffa refugees. "The Eyes were destroyed, but we should consider returning to Erebus for other mineral and technology salvage. But if we're going to do it, it should be soon. I wouldn't be surprised if Ba'al had already been alerted."

"I'd rather wait until we have more intel from the Jaffa who were there, but I'll keep that in mind." The general sat down at his desk and gestured for Daniel to take a seat, too. "I must admit that it was good to see some of your enthusiasm back, in spite of the unfortunate circumstances. You did well. But you know what I have to ask now."

"I'm not staying on Abydos," Daniel said.

He was surprised when the words slipped out. They had won this time, but there would be a next time, and if he stayed on Abydos, he would spend the rest of his life wondering what he was missing. He could imagine little worse than being unable to act for the rest of his existence.

General Hammond seemed surprised, if not by his agreement, then at least by how quickly it had come. "I'm very glad to hear that," he said, "but, at the risk of convincing you otherwise, I want to emphasize that this is not a decision to take lightly. I don't want you to make a decision about your home that you'll regret once you've regained all your memories."

"I'm not taking it lightly," Daniel said, then, oddly, found himself smiling. "Have we had this conversation before, General?"

The general gave him a small smile in return. "Yes, we have, son. But this time, it'll be more permanent. Abydos is not far from Earth, but interstellar travel is new to us. It'll be a long time before ships can be used for anything not directly related to our own defense. Abydos will have no quick way of contacting us and no guarantee that we could reach them, much less help them, even with a long-range communicator--we've had the _Prometheus_ for months, and it's already spent most of that time damaged or in enemy control."

"I understand that Earth has to be your first priority, sir."

"And if we want to make sure no Goa'uld chooses to look too hard at Abydos again, then communications should be kept to a minimum. There may be opportunities for you to return in the future, and travel from here to Abydos would certainly be more likely than the reverse. But without a Stargate, and with Anubis such a threat, that's not something I can guarantee, do you understand?"

"Yes, sir," Daniel said, a hollow pit opening somewhere in his gut. He nodded.

"All right," the general said. He eyed Daniel for a moment longer. "That doesn't bother you?"

"I might remember something else," Daniel said. "Something urgent, or a...a clue about the Lost City. I'm always going to think of something, and I can't just... I'm not sure what's left for me there."

"Then I hope we'll be able to help you stay comfortably here, possibly even off-base," the general said. "This is your planet, too--you have a right to it."

"Thank you, but I think I'd rather stay on base for now," Daniel said. "Until I'm sure of what I know and what I don't."

"There would be a few snarls in letting you live off-base," the general admitted. "Nyan was only able to move away because he's not involved in this business anymore, and there are still people keeping an eye on him. You're too well-known to those of us who know about the Stargate, and it's hard enough keeping SGC life secret from the rest of the world even without being alien."

"I understand," Daniel said distractedly. "Sir--Nyan? Is he...?"

"He's about to start his second year of graduate school," the general said with a small smile. "He and Dr. David Jordan are both still in occasional contact with us--having them and a few others as contacts in the academic world helps our archaeologists solidify their cover."

"Wow," Daniel said, impressed and a little disappointed that he hadn't been there to see his friend off. "That's...that's great."

"He took your place on the team--I think it was partly in your memory," the general said.

Daniel grimaced. "I heard, and no disrespect intended, sir, but he must have hated it."

"I think he did. He handed SG-1 off to Jonas as soon as he could."

"Jonas seems to have taken to it."

"Yes, he has," the general said. Daniel hadn't meant that as anything but a comment, but he felt himself growing tense even so, as if a decision would be made concerning the two of them now. "But so did you, and I'm in no rush to separate any part of SG-1."

Relieved, Daniel nodded. "Thank you. Sir, I need to get ready. The _teltak_ will be here in hours, and we still need to have our checkups..."

"Go ahead," the general said. "If you want my advice, take advantage of these next few days. You'll always have things you regret; don't let one of them be that you didn't spend enough time with your family while you had the chance."

...x...

_**5 July 2003; Kalima, Abydos; 1900 hrs**_

Jack had some funny ideas about marriages.

"What did he think was going to happen?" Skaara said that night, after they'd helped Seinah move her belongings into the place Skaara had made his home and most of the village had gone to bed.

Daniel shrugged. "His people often have a ceremony with flowers and promises, and an exchange of rings." Jack didn't seem to have noticed the bands that Skaara and Seinah had tied around each others' wrists; it was more practical than a loop around their fingers where it would easily fall off while working, Daniel thought.

Skaara leaned back against the support outside of his tent, where they sat shoulder-to-shoulder on the ground. "You're leaving in the morning," he said. Daniel looked at his hands and nodded. Skaara made a noise almost like a laugh. "You just came back."

"If I can come back from being dead, coming back from a few light years away shouldn't be too hard," Daniel pointed out, but he didn't look up as he said it.

"Sha'uri worries about you," Skaara said.

"Sha'uri worries," Daniel corrected.

Skaara made a face. "A few light years?" he said.

"Well...I don't know how many light years," Daniel admitted. "But it's not _that_ far. A few hours away, Skaara--that's all."

Skaara pulled his knees up to his chest. "We used to have adventures together."

"We used to be children," Daniel reminded him. "You have a wife now."

"And you have...what?" Skaara said. "A duty? A war to fight?"

"I might still come back," Daniel insisted, because he wasn't completely sure yet what he _did_ have on Earth, other than his friends and the war into which he had thoroughly entwined himself.

"The last time you said that, you came back to die," Skaara said.

Daniel opened his mouth to say that that wasn't fair--it wasn't as if he'd _wanted_ to get himself killed--but he couldn't deny that it was still true. "I'm leaving soon," he finally said. "I don't know when I'll see you next. I don't want to fight with you."

With a sigh, Skaara reached across and looped an arm around Daniel's shoulders. "Do you remember everything now?" he asked. "I don't want you to go without remembering how you grew up."

"I remember enough," Daniel said, though there were very few things and people he did remember. Still, this world and its people had mattered to him, and that was something he knew in his core.

He reached into his pocket. "Tau'ri warriors sometimes wear these," Daniel said, holding out a survival bracelet with a button from his own fatigues sewn onto the end, like the one Sam wore as a reminder of those who had yet to return home and the ones who never would. "They don't take it off until everyone from their team returns."

Skaara accepted the tightly woven band of paracord and tugged on it experimentally. "This is strong rope," he commented.

"It is," Daniel said. "It's useful."

"Then I will wear it until you return," Skaara said, and fastened it around his wrist, even though they both knew it might be a case of _if_ rather than _when_.

"We're leaving the long-range communicator. Do you remember how the power generator works and how to code a message?"

"I do," Skaara said. He sighed. "We have lived through exciting times, Dan'yel. That is enough for me. But you were always restless--this is what you were meant to do."

"Don't use it too often," Daniel made himself say, looking at the ground. "Save the generator for emergencies--if it becomes too cold one season, perhaps, I'm sure you and Sha'uri can find a way to use it to make heat. If you know how to replace the naquadah in the generator..."

"We will learn."

"And if you see a ship, hide in the caves and call us."

Skaara was quiet for a moment. "Tau'ri ships are different from Goa'uld, are they not?"

"Not all of Tau'ri is SGC, and some of them do not work with us. Even if it's not a Goa'uld ship, don't come out of here until they leave or someone you recognize finds you in Kalima."

"What should we teach our children?" Skaara said. "Do we lie and say there is nothing beyond Abydos, or that there is so much more and we fear to see it?"

Daniel shook his head. "It's not fear. Our people have to heal--not just from this attack, but from ten thousand years under the Goa'uld. Nothing stays hidden forever, and you should not allow it to. But next time, when another world meets Abydos..."

"We will be ready," Skaara said. "For good or bad."

"If anything important happens," Daniel promised, "we'll send a message. I will come back one day." He stood and helped his brother to his feet, then pushed him gently toward the house. "This is your life now, Skaara. Go to your wife. Be happy."

"You also deserve to be happy," Skaara said before he went in. "I don't want to receive a message that says you were killed."

"Nothing makes me happier than knowing Abydos is safe," Daniel said. Happiness was one thing; satisfaction was another. _'Satis_,' after all, simply meant 'enough.' "Take care of our people," Daniel said. "That is enough."

...x...

_**6 July 2003; SGC, Earth; 2000 hrs**_

"...so we loaded up as much naquadah as we'd managed to strip away, and here we are," Daniel told Teal'c once they were back on base.

"Are you all right?" Teal'c asked. Rya'c and Bra'tac had already left again with Rak'nor. Teal'c himself was nearly healed now and was sitting in preparation for _kelno'reem_.

Daniel nodded, folding his legs under himself. "This is where I should be," he said. "I feel like I belong here, more than I've ever belonged anywhere else."

There were still moments of uncertainty--when he wondered if he was at the SGC because of the potential for novelty or because it had become 'normal'--but he had no doubt that this was what he was now. The one thing he did remember about Ascension that he had never told anyone--and probably _would_ never tell--was the clear feeling that he was going to be torn apart by frustration, by the constant wish that what he _had_ to do didn't clash with what he _shouldn't_ do. At least here, at the SGC and as part of SG-1, he could live somewhat freer of that.

"I should be asking _you_ if you're all right," Daniel said.

Teal'c tilted his head. "I believe," he said, "that this is the place where I, too, belong."

"Well, good," Daniel said. "But mostly I meant physically. You took, uh...quite a beating."

With a smile, Teal'c said, "Do not be concerned. I will be ready for our next mission."

"I missed this," Daniel confided. "Just sitting here and having someone to talk to."

"You cannot know how much I have also missed these times," Teal'c said quietly.

Daniel looked back down at the candle closest to his feet. "I wrote about a lot of things in my journals, but the parts about my parents' death aren't very thorough," he said, aware that Teal'c had completely stopped moving. "As it turns out, I don't remember that day anymore--that memory starts with waking up on Chulak--but I'm pretty sure that omission was intentional, and I can only think of one reason for it. We've never talked about that day in detail, have we?"

"We have not," Teal'c said. "I believe you deliberately chose not to do so--it may be that you yourself did not remember the day clearly enough."

"I think I did but didn't want to say it. It's true, though, isn't it? What happened to them, and...and your involvement?"

"Yes," Teal'c said. His gaze wavered for a bit, then fixed firmly on Daniel. "Whether or not I was the one who held the weapon that caused their deaths does not change my responsibility."

"Yeah, _that_ conversation I remember," Daniel said. He looked up and found Teal'c looking uncertain. "I just wanted to know, Teal'c. It doesn't change anything."

"Daniel Jackson," Teal'c said carefully, "I killed the man who murdered my father."

_Why did you not do the same?_ was the unspoken question, but, rather than point out the obvious--Daniel wasn't Teal'c and Teal'c wasn't Daniel--he said, "I know. I helped."

"I have never understood why you forgave me," Teal'c said.

In the beginning, it might have been a matter of necessity--he had latched onto whomever he could during a difficult time in a strange world. But even then, there had been more to it. Leaning forward, Daniel said, "I guess...it wasn't personal. You shot the people aiming weapons at you and your men; you weren't specifically trying to kill _them_. I knew the choices you'd made, and it's part of what makes you who you are. If I can accept everything else you've done in your life under Apophis, however terrible, then I have to accept that, too."

"You are under no such obligation," Teal'c said.

"We're a long way past obligation," Daniel said. The Goa'uld and their armies had killed his parents; Teal'c had been part of those forces but had turned, and now he was part of SG-1 and their team. There were things they all locked away in the back of their minds because they couldn't keep thinking about them if they wanted to survive, and if this was one of those things, it was one Daniel had carefully examined and then put firmly aside. The past was past; this was what mattered now.

"I see," Teal'c said. He finally returned the smile and bowed his head.

"One day," Daniel said, "when the System Lords really are defeated, will you..."

Teal'c waited for a while, then said, "What is it?"

"Never mind," Daniel said, shaking his head. "I was going to ask if you'd go back to your family or...but there's no point asking now, yeah? We don't know yet."

"Precisely," Teal'c said, nodding solemnly, then closed his eyes. Daniel decided to take that as a hint and scooted back until he was leaning against the edge of Teal'c's bed and opened his journal to write quietly until Teal'c had finished meditating.

"I won't," he said a minute later. "I don't think I'd go back if the time came to choose. Not if it meant staying there."

Teal'c didn't answer for a long time. Daniel had almost finished his final entry about Abydos when he heard, "I may return to my people when the time comes."

"Your people might still need you," Daniel answered, raising his eyes to find Teal'c watching him. "We understand. We _hope_ it happens, in a way, because it'll mean the Jaffa rebellion is going somewhere."

"You told me once, in my dream, that I was the only one who could decide what my path would be," Teal'c said. Daniel straightened, knowing that this was something that had been very important to his friend. "It may be that we--all of us--will eventually choose different paths."

Daniel shrugged, a little uncomfortable. "I'm glad to share the journey for now, though."

Teal'c smiled. "You told me that, also."

"Oh. Well, at least I'm consistent." He skimmed over what he had written, looking for details he might have left out--every detail needed to be recorded now that memory might no longer serve--and closed the journal. "But if you rejoin the Jaffa, we'll visit."

He wondered when it was that Teal'c had started smiling more. He wished a little bit that he had been here to see it, but he liked how comfortably the expression now sat on Teal'c's face.

XXXXX

It wasn't until the second time Jack invited him to his house that Daniel found himself missing a home he didn't remember--missing, mostly, the memories he would never call back to mind.

Jack found him on the roof after midnight. "Hello," Jack said, pulling up a chair and lowering himself into it with a groan.

"Your knees are worse," Daniel commented. He'd rarely noticed before--it had simply been part of Jack. Daniel had spent his years at the SGC growing older, but he hadn't thought much about the fact that everyone else--like Jack--would be getting older, too.

"Had another surgery while you were gone," Jack told him, settling more comfortably into his seat. "Before Nyan, the ninth guy to try out for your spot screwed up off-world. He got a dart in the butt, though," he added, sounding like he took far too much pleasure in that fact.

"_Ninth_," Daniel echoed, shaking his head. He didn't say any more, though; he couldn't imagine running through a line of men and women who tried to replace Teal'c or Sam. "Are you okay?"

"Ah," Jack said, waving a hand. "No big deal. Knees. Back. You'd better enjoy it for the next ten years or so--it only goes downhill from there."

"You're not _that_ old, Jack," Daniel said.

Jack shrugged. "I can still do the job. You out here for a reason?"

"Can we see Abydos's system from here?" Daniel asked, nodding toward the starlit sky.

"You asked me that before," Jack said.

Daniel remembered then that the answer had been 'no.' "Right." He folded his arms around himself, though it was a warm night. "I missed it. I wanted to go home so badly."

Jack nodded. He tilted his chair back on its back legs, balancing with his feet braced against the railing at the edge of the roof. The legs slipped and scraped a little against the ground before he shifted to balance the weight better. "Yeah, you did."

"That's dangerous, Jack, don't do that," Daniel said, rolling his eyes when Jack deliberately looked at him and tilted back another few inches before dropping the chair back on all fours.

"Which one of us was the kid, again?" Jack said.

"I've always known that was you," he answered easily. Sometimes, it was so easy. "You're the ones who've lived under the delusion that you were more mature than I was."

"Hey," Jack returned, "I'm not the one sitting on a roof at two in the morning." _Why are you up?_ his tone asked, though he didn't move to ask it aloud.

"Did I used to dream about my parents a lot?" Daniel asked.

Jack didn't quite hide a wince before he said, "I don't know. You didn't talk about it. Not to me, anyway."

"Yeah." When he had sought out anyone after a nightmare, it had usually been Teal'c--they had lived two doors from each other, and Teal'c had offered simple quiet and an occasional piece of calming advice. "I hate not knowing whether I'm remembering their voices or just imagining it."

Jack drummed his fingers on the arm of his chair, blowing his cheeks out and looking awkward. "What do they say?" he finally asked.

Daniel shrugged. "I don't know. It's like they're too far away. You know, I remember how much I loved my home, but I don't feel like I want to go back."

Jack was silent for a while. "It seems like you've remembered most of it from reading your journals," he said.

Shaking his head in frustration, Daniel tried to explain, "It's like hearing it second-hand." Like a blurry, gray, duplicate picture when he had had the original in full color and motion. "It's just facts. There's nothing pulling me back."

"Is that why you were so tense while we were there?"

"I was starting to remember about Erebus," Daniel said. "I don't think it was anything the Others did specifically; it just felt like there was something I had to do, and it wasn't on Abydos." That was how it would always be. He would always feel like there was something he had to do somewhere else, and so Abydos could never be 'home' again, not really.

"Huh," Jack said. "You saved them from Anubis, though. You saved their planet for them."

Daniel made a face. There was still a part of him that remembered, fiercely, how much he'd wanted to keep it safe and how much he'd loved his hometown and the people who had made him their own. It was like a dull ache that had been soothed by distance but could never quite go away, because it would always seem like an unfinished story in his mind. "But not for me."

"You were never doing it for you," Jack said, perhaps the only reassurance possible.

Daniel nodded, his throat tight. "Yeah," he managed. "Guess that's all that matters."

"You okay?" Jack said.

"Great," Daniel lied.

"Sure," Jack said, and sat with him without speaking until he was ready to return to bed.


	18. Part V: The Journey Home, 4 of 4

**Part V (cont'd)**

_**3 August 2003; SGC, Earth; 1000 hrs**_

Sam walked into her lab one morning to find Jonas frowning at her last naquadria conversion simulations. "Hey," she said, startling him into looking up. "So what do you think?"

"I think Daniel was right about the bomb test," Jonas said. "It would explain a lot, including why we've never found naquadria anywhere else."

She nodded. "I thought so. _That_ opens up a new can of worms." And it meant that they might have a way of generating new naquadria, too, as long as they didn't go the way of Kelowna in the process. Sam saw piles of paper and lots of arguing about policy in her near future. "I want to put a pause on all naquadria research until we can decide exactly how we want to proceed," she added. "Do me a favor and tell anyone you know of who's working on it."

Jonas was quiet for a moment. "You know how they check my neural scans specifically for naquadria damage?" he said. "They should start doing that with the other scientists working on it. Most of them aren't field personnel, so I don't think they have the same medical requirements."

"Everyone here has been given those recommendations, and we're pretty careful whenever we work with naquadria--"

"Well, so were we," Jonas said, his tone as close to 'testy' as he ever got. "We weren't as advanced as you, but we understood radiation and shielding."

"That's true," she conceded. "All right, we'll have to revise protocols for that, too, but honestly, Jonas, we might have to phase out naquadria research altogether if we can't find a way to work around its instability. The risks are going to start outweighing the benefits."

"I think the crew of the _Prometheus_ would agree with you there," Jonas said with a wry smile, and, just like that, any of his previous tension was gone.

A soft kick on the doorframe revealed Daniel, carrying what looked like a projector in his arms. "Am I interrupting?" he asked.

"Nah," Jonas said, straightening from his seat. "We were just talking about you, anyway."

Daniel raised his eyebrows as he stepped into the lab. "Really," he said.

"More like talking about your naquadria tip," Sam corrected. "We think it pans out. Now, are you going to tell us what that--wait, is that the Tok'ra holographic projector Martouf and Dr. Lee were messing with?"

"Yeah; they managed to get it to interface with the Tok'ra memory recall device," Daniel said. He set it down on a clear area of bench space. "I'm supposed to give it to you to see what you want to do with it."

"It interfaces with the what?" Jonas said.

Sam eyed the projector dubiously. "It's a little disk you attach here," she said, pointing to her temple. "It stimulates memory centers to enhance recall. I've used one on a Tok'ra mission before, but I'm pretty sure the only one we have is the one we usually use with the _zatarc_ detector. We regularly checked all our personnel for _zatarc_ programming--"

"Right, during the period after the Tok'ra treaty," Jonas remembered, nodding.

"--but we discontinued it after about a year when it seemed likely that the Goa'uld responsible for the technology had been killed by Martouf on his last mission for the Tok'ra."

"The disk we used for that still works as a memory enhancer when it's set correctly," Daniel told her. "Janet was there the whole time, so it was safe."

"You _used_ it? I should've been there to monitor in case something went wrong," she said, letting some rebuke into her tone. "Bill was the last one fiddling with this, and you know how he is with safety precautions."

"Well, Martouf had finished most of the fiddling before we Ascended," Daniel said. "And some of my memories are private. Jack and Teal'c weren't there, either; only Janet." Before she could say anything else, he added, "As it turned out, we managed to stay mostly on less private thoughts, so if you're interested in seeing how the Goa'uld holographically project memories..."

"So that's really possible?" Sam said, more interested now. Jonas tilted his head, examining the projector. "Memories aren't usually straightforward or that sequential, are they?" Although she supposed it was possible that that was one of the recall device's functions: to make a collection of thoughts linear enough to be visualized on a screen.

Daniel shrugged. "I just spent an hour hooked up to this thing, and it seems to have worked." He tapped his temple where a tiny mark showed that he'd just had a disk attached to his head. "It was modified from a projector that was meant to be used as a recording device, too, and since no one has figured out how to erase its history except by overwriting it, you can probably play back what we saw this morning."

She looked up sharply and automatically glanced around to verify that they were the only ones in the room. "You don't mind? What's the recording of?"

"Nothing much," he said, not quite casual. "Abydos, mostly. It took a while to figure out how to focus on the right memories, though, so it skips around a bit." Sam wasn't sure what her face looked like, but it must have been quite excited, because Daniel smiled and said, "Like I said, you can look if you want. I thought you'd be interested."

Eager to see how it worked, Sam powered it on.

There was a blurry scene that made little sense until she realized that they were watching it from the point of view of someone sitting on a man's shoulders. A boy who looked like a younger version of Skaara ran ahead of them, tugging on a woman's hand.

"That's my mother and Skaara," Daniel said. "We were walking back. I'm sitting on my father."

"Aw," Sam said before she could stop herself. Suddenly, though, Skaara and Claire Jackson disappeared. "What is that?" she said, pointing at what looked like a black screen. Even as they watched, the darkness seemed to get nearer and nearer until the memory stopped altogether. "That black..."

"That's my village," Daniel said, watching along with them. "That's what it always looks like whenever I dream about it now. I can't remember what happens next in that memory." Sam grimaced, some of the excitement at the technology dying away as she realized what Daniel had been trying to do with this little experiment.

"So it's really..." she started, then stopped when another memory started.

This one was of the embarkation room, with Ferretti's original team and Daniel on the ramp--this must have been their first trip back to Abydos--but as soon as the memory reached the event horizon, it ended.

The next one showed a terrified young Daniel being chased through the desert sand by a mastadge with a broken harness, with Skaara chasing after them both, only to be swallowed up by the same blackness as they reached what should have been the naquadah mines. And then--

"Well," Daniel said casually as he switched the projector off. "That's that. There were a few others that got overwritten. I was hoping a more objective look would help, but it's really just not there anymore. You can play with the projector though."

"Do you want to keep experimenting with it?" Sam offered, examining the projector again. "I can help--maybe if we adjust some parameters, you'd be able to access more memories."

"No," Daniel said.

She frowned. "You don't...even want to try again?"

"It's gone," he said, nodding at the projector. "That's it. Trying again isn't going to help--at some point, it's just denial and a waste of time."

"What about something else? You didn't look for the lost city or anything?" Jonas said.

"I started to," Daniel said. "Nothing happened except a headache."

"Well, maybe," Sam said again, "if we adjust some--"

"And even if I do remember all the secrets of the Ascended Ancients, I'm not sure any of us should know," Daniel said.

Sam raised her eyebrows. "Well, that's a change," she said cautiously. "You seemed to want to remember it before."

"That was before I remembered what happened when Shifu came here," Daniel pointed out.

"The Harsesis?" Jonas said, looking confused--he only knew what little the reports said about Shifu. "I thought nothing ever came of that incident."

"Exactly," Daniel said.

"We're not asking you to divulge everything," she tried. Daniel definitely remembered something about his time on the higher planes--he had to, if he'd remembered Erebus, and facts about naquadria and whatever had happened between him and Teal'c and the colonel during that time. "You could just pick and choose the information that's important, with the help of the memory recall device."

"That's what we told Shifu," Daniel said firmly. "I found out I was wrong then, and I'm not going to risk trying that device any more. Besides, if I remember too much, even without telling everyone else, who's to say I won't become the next Anubis?"

Jonas laughed, thinking it was a joke, then trailed off. "You're serious?" he said uncertainly.

Daniel looked at him. "I will not consent to further experimentation with a memory enhancer concerning memories I lost as a result of Descension," he said. "So. 'Bye." He nodded to them and left the lab.

"What happened when Shifu was here?" Jonas asked her. "I'm missing something."

"It's...a long story," Sam hedged, though she felt like something was still being held back. "But maybe he's right. Remember that fight on Abydos? Imagine that kind of power, but more, and letting the knowledge of how to use it fall into the NID's hands, or even our own hands..."

"Too much potential for abuse?" he said, not quite sounding convinced. "Okay. If you...say so."

"Jonas, do you mind finishing this up on your own?" she asked, pointing at the simulation displayed on her computer screen. "I need to..." She gestured vaguely in the direction Daniel had gone. "I'm sorry. I know this is probably sort of weird to you--"

"No, sure, of course," Jonas said. "I've gotten used to weird."

...x...

"Mackenzie's given me approval to rejoin SG-1 fulltime," Daniel said when she appeared at his office door. "A lot of what I don't remember, I still _know_. Either I never lost the factual knowledge, or I've just done a good job studying after my Descension. Probably a bit of both."

Sam raised her eyebrows. "I don't think Mackenzie's _ever_ signed off on you before," she said, "not without an argument."

Daniel shrugged. "Something about being tortured to death and killing an army on the way down seems to have made people stop thinking of me as a kid. It's either that or the Ascension."

She couldn't tell if he was trying to provoke her, because this was also his style of sharp joking--although it was often the same thing. She nodded and perched on the edge of Jonas's desk. "They made you talk to Mackenzie?" she asked.

"It was my idea," he said.

Sam blinked. "It was _what_? You never would've, before, not without being ordered to."

"He's the one who suggested using the memory recall device to try to remember about Abydos."

Oh. Mackenzie _was_ an expert in psychiatric neuroimaging. Maybe projection of memories fell under that category, too. "What's he say about the results?"

"That I respond to it like someone with irreversible brain damage," Daniel said. "My semantic memory about Abydonian life is relatively intact; it's just episodic memories that are gone, which is why they don't show up on the projector--you can't watch a scene play out if all you have are isolated facts out of context."

Sam tried not to wince. There weren't many phrases that managed to frighten her more than 'brain damage.' "Are you okay?"

"Sure."

"You really don't mind not thinking about what might be left in your brain?"

Daniel took off his already-clean glasses and wiped them carefully with his shirt. "It's not like I don't think about it," he said. "I remembered Erebus while meditating, and I won't stop trying the same way. But not with a memory probe. Moral risk aside, if the Others did this, who knows if they would step in to stop me from using Goa'uld tech to artificially seek out memories?"

Sam decided she didn't like the Others very much right now, except maybe Orlin and Martouf if they counted as Others. "That's a good point," she allowed. "But you know you can talk to us, too, right, if anything's going on?"

Exasperated, he insisted, "Sam, nothing's going on! I'm sorry if I'm not the--" He stopped. _Not the same_, he'd almost said. She'd been thinking it lately; they all had. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing--well, I...just..." Sam said, not completely sure how to articulate it. Daniel raised his eyebrows. "When I said you wouldn't have gone to Mackenzie before, I didn't mean anything by it. I was just worried."

"I know," he said.

"I won't bring it up again, then," she said.

Daniel chewed his lip. "Look, uh, Sam..." He stopped, then started again. "Am I...different?"

Swallowing hard--it wasn't like she hadn't been thinking it--she said, "You don't need to be comparing yourself to what people are saying. There's no question that you're who you are."

He still looked a bit unhappy and defensive on top of it. "So what's wrong?"

Sam managed a smile. "Nothing. I just have a lot of questions left."

"Like what?" he asked.

"Nothing you need to worry about."

"It's my head, Sam, and you've been annoyed about _something_ for the last few weeks, so..."

"I'm not annoyed," she protested. He raised his eyebrows, looking unconvinced. "I just really...want you to be okay," she said, sounding silly to herself.

"I am," he said.

She bit her lip. "If you need--"

"I know," he said. He finally gave her a smile. "_Really_. I do."

"You _are_ different, you know," she said, and his smile started to fade.

"People change," he said.

"I saw you wailing on a punching bag yesterday," Sam said, straightening a pile of paper on Jonas's desk. "On your own--not with Teal'c or Colonel O'Neill or anything. It was strange. Not like you." When he'd been younger, she might not have been surprised to see him go to the gym to punch things if he was upset, because young men could be hotheaded and Daniel had been quick to action, except that he hadn't been like that; he would have gone to fume in the library instead. Yesterday had been different--a methodical, calm workout, nothing that would leave unnecessarily bruised knuckles or strained muscles. As if it were normal, except it wasn't.

Daniel shrugged, looking a little uncomfortable. "Physical requirements were upped sometime in the last year."

"It's been a long time since you've had any worries about passing physical requirements."

"Well, I figured," he tried again. "You know. Jonas and I are both staying on SG-1, right?"

"Yeah," Sam said. Aside from avoiding the tricky question of how to split up parts of a team like SG-1, there were advantages and practically no downsides--an extra man on a team their size was a twenty-five percent increase in numbers, not to mention the extra brains.

"But we're still a combat team, at least sometimes. I don't want you and Jack and Teal'c having to look back all the time to make sure I'm keeping up."

"We don't do that--" She frowned. "Because we need to keep an eye on Jonas, you mean. Look, he _is_ combat-ready. No one is on SG-1 if he needs to be babysat."

"Sam," Daniel said. "Jonas said he was going to start bringing a live handgun for the first time next mission, because he usually brings a zat or an _intar_. Erebus was an exception. He isn't even as good at hand-to-hand or marksmanship as _I_ am, and I'm worse than the rest of you."

It felt uncomfortable to be defending Daniel's replacement to Daniel, but Sam said, "Yeah, but you need to think about who that's in comparison to. You had years; he's had months."

"I'm not saying he's not good enough. It's just that we now have three science or culture specialists on a five-man team, and I think it'll work, but battles aren't going to avoid us. Jonas is good at a lot of things, but until he stops hesitating before he throws a punch..."

"You don't have to protect him," she said, but she understood it, too. They'd all felt that way about Daniel when he'd first joined. Daniel had been too quick to jump in rather than too hesitant, as Jonas sometimes was, but everyone's learning curve was different. "And it's not like he's taken your place and you need to find a new one. You don't have to worry about that."

"No, I know," he said. "We have our strengths, that's all--"

"And since when have you wanted to count fighting among one of yours?" she said.

"This isn't about what we _want_," Daniel said. "It's what we need as an entire team and...and what we _are_. Did you forget that my dying act was a botched assassination attempt that I turned into a massacre, in which Selmak and Martouf became collateral damage?"

Taken aback at the choice of phrasing--and more than a little hurt, because Daniel always knew the harshest way to lash out--Sam found herself saying, "I'm not the one whose memories need work," and then wanted to shrivel up and take it back.

Daniel started to stand up, then stopped and looked away instead. "I'm...I'm sorry. Sam. I shouldn't've said that."

Sam rubbed her forehead and moved toward the door to push it shut. "God. Me neither. You're the one who died. I'm not the one it happened to," she said, leaning back against the door.

"Sure you are," Daniel said quietly. "I bet it lasted longer for you than it did for me."

A lump appeared in her throat. "I'd rather not think too hard about how long it did last for you," she said, remembering the flashes of broken and burnt skin she'd seen behind an infirmary curtain. Daniel chewed on his lip but didn't flinch or move toward her; Sam wished she weren't constantly comparing this Daniel to the one from _before_. She stepped away from the door, pulled another chair closer to him, and sat. "Is that what all of this is about?" she asked. "You think you need to be ready for some 'next time?'"

"It was just a punching bag," he said. "You've established a balance, the three of you and Jonas, and I want to make sure I'm adding to it instead of tipping it one way or another. You don't need two junior teammates on SG-1."

"Anyone who survives what you did in your first couple of years is pretty damn experienced," she said. "And Jonas might be relatively new, but he isn't naïve."

"After Kelowna, and...and what Nirrti did to him?" he said. "Of course not."

"You don't need to shield him from this life, and you can't, anyway. I know--we tried with you."

"I know. But." Daniel folded his hands and leaned forward. "Put it this way. I've been thinking. How did you feel after the summit where I was supposed to kill the System Lords?"

"I...cannot believe you just asked me that," Sam said.

"Not about me or Martouf or your father. About the mission."

"Missions go wrong," she said, not sure where this was leading. "It happens."

He shook his head. "Do you remember when we first found Cimmeria? We were so excited at the _possibility_ that someone else might be out there who could fight the Goa'uld. This last time, we had months of preparation, a lot of allies, years of training, a perfect opportunity...we had tangible reason to believe we could _actually_ bring about the end of the war, and it was just another mission. We hoped, obviously, but when it went wrong, and the System Lords escaped, and Anubis rose, and half the Tok'ra were slaughtered...was anyone even surprised?"

_Not many_, she didn't have to tell him. Grieving, maybe, for a dozen reasons, but not surprised--more resigned. "You were crushed when Cimmeria didn't live up to what we'd hoped," she reminded him. "I remember you hiding in my office after that. You can only live on that roller coaster for so long."

"But why?" he insisted. "Sam, we _walk through wormholes_. To other planets across the _galaxy_."

Sam had to smile and conceded, "Well, yeah. I guess that's true."

"The point is, we don't even think about it anymore, good _or_ bad. Jonas still thinks everything's amazing, and...and why shouldn't he? When did all of that become just routine for us? Maybe we've forgotten what it was like at first, and we need to remember it better."

"I miss this," she blurted. Sometimes, she didn't recognize him anymore--the kid she'd let into her lab had turned into someone else, as kids were wont to do--and sometimes, he was exactly the same person who had literally been dragged into this world and had taken it by storm with crazy ideas and passion for what he thought was right. "_We _missed it, when you were gone. You were part of what we all had in common, you know, even when you were little. And then, afterward, we got tired."

"Maybe you needed a Jonas Quinn," he said, not quite teasing.

"We wanted you," she said tightly. "Not that he...but it wasn't the same."

"Well, you've got us both now," Daniel said. "It'll be fun. Jonas and I have a bet on how long it takes for the two of us to make Jack say 'for crying out loud' the next time we find ruins of an Ancient city. He says ten minutes, but he underestimates me." She laughed. "Maybe we need someone who still always thinks it's all new and exciting at the end of the day. And...and maybe I'd like him to stay that way."

Sam had been that person, once. Teal'c had grown up around Stargates; the colonel had been too cynical at the start of the SGC. But she'd done her share of gawking in wonder, and by the time the shine had begun to wear off, Daniel had jumped onboard and taken over that role. He had always argued that their intentions and attitudes were important, not just their results, and all morality aside, maybe it was what kept them fresh and sane, too.

"You mean you don't want him to have to, oh, say, infiltrate a Goa'uld conference and try to murder the people inside," Sam said.

"You know what I realized during that summit?" Daniel said. "I thought it was all the same--you want someone dead, you kill him. It shouldn't matter how. If guards had been there, it would have almost been easier. But it's not the same when you're lying, and they're sitting, unarmed, talking, and you just have to push a button but you're in no _immediate_ danger... I mean, I would've done it, but it was...different."

"Yeah," she managed.

"What do you think that is?" he asked, sounding honestly, coldly curious. "I don't think it's cowardice. Morality? Why is the morality barrier higher for one case than for another?"

"I don't know." She'd never been in that exact situation before, but she'd had to lie on missions. She didn't like to think too much about Fifth, the Replicator they'd tricked and manipulated, who hadn't been a threat yet and had been an innocent. What had made them think it was okay to send Daniel to spy on and kill the Goa'uld, knowing that innocents would be collateral damage?

"I think it's because the idea of killing is repulsive to us on some level," he told her, as if they were debating the merits of this microscope versus that one. "Immediate personal danger makes the act seem less unacceptable."

"Daniel," she said.

"The funny thing is that I argued as hard as anyone for us to take the mission," he added thoughtfully. "I didn't understand that it would be different. It made sense at the time. Logical."

"_Daniel_," Sam said.

Daniel looked down at his desk. "Do _you_ want that to be Jonas next time?" he asked.

"Of course not," she said stiffly. "I didn't want it to be you, either."

"I remember."

Finally jumping on the conversation, she said, "And _I_ remember we sent you to kill the most powerful of our enemies without backup and then let you die saving us."

"Sam," he sighed. "That wasn't... You know I'd do it all again. Exactly the same, except faster. I'm...sure Selmak would have agreed. Any of us would've done it."

She ignored that. "You know what else I remember about you?"

He didn't answer, so she leaned closer to him.

"I remember how much it hurt you when you couldn't do anything to help people," she said. He stared intently at his desk. "I remember you knelt to Apophis to pray for his host, because you thought it was right, while I stood by and watched because I wouldn't even have considered doing it."

"You always had the worst Egyptian accent of all of us," he quipped.

"You know that's not what I mean. You spent so long dreaming of killing him, and you still picked mercy. Shifu and Oma chose you, Daniel. That means something. You gave Martouf peace--you gave me, Lantash, and my dad a bit of peace. That's the person I remember. Maybe...maybe we made you into someone who can be a spy and an assassin, but that's not who you were. There was a stretch of time when I thought it was going to tear you apart, when you kept having bad missions--you just _had_ to do something to help, and I could see what it did to you every time you couldn't. We needed that on our side. You gave us that."

"That was a bad year," he said, smiling faintly the way only people like them would smile at the thought of bad times. Then he smiled a little wider. "I'm probably not even thinking of the same year that you are."

Sam found herself smiling back. "We don't exactly have good years around here."

"Good days," he offered. "Even stretches of them, on occasion."

"Yeah," she laughed, glad to see him joking, even though there was nothing amusing about it. "I'm just saying, you're a good person. You try to do good things."

"I know that."

"Yeah?"

"But it not enough," he said, his expression saying that he knew she knew it, too.

"If it ever becomes enough, you've already lost," she told him. "_That's_ you, too. So don't ever think we need you to be anyone but yourself. You don't have to become a...a miniature Teal'c just because we have another civilian with us now. You're not just a role on the team."

"I know," he said. "But sometimes I am. No, Sam, that's just--SG-1 is...it's who I am, too."

"Yeah," she said. "I guess it is." And, when it came down to it, it was who the rest of them were, too. "Just remember what that means. We're SG-1--we explore."

"I did notice that. I've done a bit of exploring in my time."

"So are you done?"

Daniel became very still. "What's that supposed to mean?"

Sam took a breath and said, "You just seem...awfully ready to concede things lately. The four Eyes, strategic decisions, your memories of about a billion things...and you have good reasons, I know, but you were even willing to give up your place on the team. We asked the general to let all of us stay together--even Jonas spoke up for you, because you didn't."

"I'm not allowed just to be happy where I am?" he said quietly. "Not being pulled somewhere else for once, looking for something I'll probably never find?"

A few years ago, she would have wanted nothing more than to let him find peace. Months ago, she wouldn't have cared how he was, as long as he came back. Now, she would rather that he take the hard way rather than the easy, if only because he was losing an important part of being himself if he didn't. "I don't think you're even looking for anything right now, except maybe for a fight where you can do something," she said. "And I think you need more than that."

"I have SG-1," he said, and until she'd heard him say that, she would never have imagined that that could ever be the easy way out for anyone. What was an insane adventure for most people was a familiar, ordinary lifestyle for him. "Sam, that's all I have right now."

She reached out to squeeze his arm. "And we can be that for you," she said, "for now. But you've got to find something, or we're going to lose you again. I want Daniel Jackson at my back, not just some fifth member of SG-1, no matter how good he is at his job."

Daniel touched his bare wrist, where he had once worn a bracelet from Skaara to remind him of his home. He had lost it years ago, but the motion was still familiar, and, for a moment, Sam could still see the fourteen-year-old boy she'd shepherded into her lab with a fountain pen and a notebook and a book about constellations. "I'm not even whole, Sam," he said. "I'm missing half of my life."

"The part that matters is still here," she said firmly. "You can't stop, and you can't just...go with the flow, even if it makes things easier. That's not you." She'd seen him fired up over Erebus, and she knew that all it would take was a whiff of an exciting new project to perk his interest in it, but those were just dots without a line to connect them. Daniel's mind went to dangerous places with perilous schemes when there wasn't something pulling him back into line.

"I'm trying," he said. "I probably remember everything I'm going to, but I can't tell when I've gone too far or not far enough. It's...it's..."

"I know," she said. "You're not the same as you were before, and it might take time to find where you stand and where you want to stand. _We're_ gonna need time. But you're the one who made me look at things from the other side and push past all the things I thought were boundaries. I'm not going to let you settle for 'enough.' Ever. I just want you to know that."

He caught her hand on his arm and nodded. "Okay," he said, pulling back. Before she could say anything else, he said, "I never asked you about your father."

Sam paused, still leaning on his desk with an elbow. "Uh. You know he's alive. Right?"

"No--yeah," he said, shaking his head. "I know. There are just so many people I should or want to ask about, and I didn't think of him until we were experimenting with that--"

"Oh, he's the one who brought that holographic projector here in the first place," Sam remembered, starting to smile. What was it about time that made the most complicated things in the past seem so much simpler than the present? "What was that--four years ago?"

"Something like that," Daniel said, tentatively smiling back. "Just before you took out Seth."

"We," she corrected. "Definitely a team effort on that one."

He shrugged. "If the ribbon device fits," he said. She snorted and backhanded his arm lightly. Time could also make the frightening things seem less so. "How is he these days?"

Sam almost said, _'good,'_ as the easiest generic response, then said honestly, "We don't see him much, but when we do, he's pretty stressed. There's always been tension between us and the Tok'ra, and it's starting to show within their ranks, too. It probably doesn't help that it's...you know, Dad and Lantash."

Daniel grimaced. "Not exactly a calming combination," he agreed, but his eyes stayed fixed on hers. "But I wasn't talking about politics."

Sometimes, when she closed her eyes to go to sleep, she could still see the blinding, captivating light of Ascension. She'd seen it too many times--first Oma, then Shifu, then Orlin and Daniel and Martouf--and the sight that had awed her at first had become an incomprehensible mix of relief and despair. "It was hard on him," she said, meaning not just the political tension but Martouf and Selmak.

"What about you?" Daniel said.

"Wasn't easy," she admitted, the way she could never say to the colonel, because he was her superior, or to Jonas, because he still looked up to her sometimes. "But I wasn't alone."

He folded his arms around himself. "I wish I'd been here," he said, almost like an apology.

"Me, too," Sam agreed, meaning, _it's okay._

"I haven't found a real project yet," he said abruptly. "If you want to play around with the projector sometime, I can help you get started. Or if you've got unidentified devices lying around, I can look for their controls and you can make them work better. If you want."

It wasn't until she heard that that she realized she had been waiting to hear it for a long time. She and Daniel drilled together with weapons, but what she really loved was fiddling with technology beside him. "Yeah," she said eagerly. "Wanna go now?"

"Sure," he said.

On the way, he asked, "How's Cassie?"

Given what he'd said about the people he kept remembering to ask about--the loose ends he'd left behind--she said, "C'mon, let's get to the lab and I'll fill you in. We've got a lot to catch up on."

XXXXX

_**5 August 2003; SGC, Earth; 2300 hrs**_

"Hey," Jonas said when he stopped by the office and found Daniel at the fish tank. "You about done for the night?"

Daniel looked up as if surprised and held up the can in his hand. "Just feeding the fish," he said. "What were you doing?"

"Late briefing," Jonas said, dropping onto their couch with an _oof_. "There was a routine first-contact mission we took a few months ago--we're sending in a new team and they needed a rundown of customs, language, courtesies, history..."

"Is something going on there?" Daniel asked.

"SG-14's trying to start up relations," Jonas said. "You know the drill. Nothing big. I'm all done now, though; the rest is out of our hands."

"Good."

Jonas watched as he put the fish food down carefully and wandered toward the coffeepot. There was a sort of care to everything Daniel did these days that was different from the reflexive grace of muscle-memory that he had carried just after Vis Uban--it wasn't clumsiness, exactly, but rather a hyperawareness of where his limbs were, as if he needed an extra moment to find his balance and make sure he wouldn't step too hard or too lightly on something. Maybe that was just the way he was--everything about him, Jonas found, from his words in a speech to his bullets at the shoot range, was studied and well-aimed.

"I've never kept fish before," Daniel said absently. "They're much easier than human babies."

Jonas couldn't help laughing at the image. It was almost impossible to imagine this Daniel Jackson carrying the Harsesis infant around base with him, though records and talk said that it had happened once upon a time. "Yeah, well, I considered keeping a couple of babies in a tank on your desk, but then I thought, 'fish would be easier to feed.'"

Shaking his head, Daniel held out a clean mug, offering, "Want some?"

"I don't know how you can drink that at"--Jonas looked back to see the clock--"eleven at night."

Daniel shrugged and poured his own cup before sitting back down. "It relaxes me."

"Because that's what stimulants do," Jonas said.

"I'm studying. Some of us actually need to read things more than once to remember them," he pointed out. Jonas rolled his eyes but didn't dispute the point--Daniel could write dictionaries and grammars from scratch like no one else could, but Jonas could memorize them faster. He couldn't _wait_ until they got a chance to work out a puzzle together. "Hey, you can go to bed--I can get the last of your paperwork for the day started, and you can finish it in the morning."

"What about you?" Jonas said, tempted to call it a day. "Still catching up on reading?"

"Mm-hm," Daniel said. He took a sip of coffee and added casually, "I never realized how many people I never knew, until I looked up the current teams' compositions and couldn't tell who was newly recruited and who'd been killed in action during the last year."

"You know," Jonas said, leaning back and not much fazed by this kind of thing anymore, since he suspected it was partly just Daniel's way--conscious or not--of testing people, "you're kind of creepy sometimes."

"You know," Daniel answered, not stopping his reading, "you're kind of cheerful sometimes."

"I try my best," Jonas said, grinning when Daniel looked up without raising his head, his eyes peeking out over the tops of his glasses. There was a trick to dealing with Daniel, he'd found--it had a lot to do with understanding what was a joke and what was deadly serious, because both could be equally disturbing or amusing and be said exactly the same way, but how one answered determined how much respect one received in return. Jonas suspected he was lucky they'd met and become tentative friends _before_ Daniel had remembered to be cynical and generally disconcerting. "So...we've got a mission coming up. Excited?"

"Ecstatic," Daniel deadpanned, though Jonas thought his lips might be twitching. "This one's... P3X-289? Or am I thinking of another one?" He opened a folder partway, tilting his head to see the top page.

"No, that's the one. It's got a toxic atmosphere," Jonas prodded. "_And_ a dome."

Daniel snorted and let the folder fall closed. "Are you seriously excited about that?"

"Well, not the toxic part. Still. This one looks interesting."

"Do you want to take point if we meet people inside that dome?" Daniel asked.

"Oh...you have more experience..." Jonas started. "I mean, it's up to you. Whatever you think best."

Daniel nodded. "We'll fall into place when the time comes," he said, seemingly unconcerned. "If you recognize the language, you talk; if I figure it out first, I'll talk. I'm sure it'll be fine."

Jonas nodded again, a little relieved. "You really don't mind my sticking around?"

"You have at least as much right to the team as I do. I should be asking you if _you_ mind _me_."

"No, of course not," Jonas said. "I always wanted to meet you. Not that I thought I ever would." Daniel gave him a polite but very distant smile and looked back down at his notes. "And do you know how hard it is to be SG-1 without someone actually good at diplomacy?"

Still reading something, Daniel said, "My idea of diplomacy was blurting things and hoping that aliens liked me enough to go along with it. I only looked diplomatic next to Jack. You worked as a government representative to your people _and_ to outsiders. You're the one with training."

"Uh-uh," Jonas said, shaking his head. "No, see, but that's not enough. You know what I was to them?"

Finally, Daniel looked up, his expression wary, "I shouldn't judge just from reports..."

"Go ahead," Jonas said. "You can say it."

"You were their pawn," Daniel said, turning his full attention to Jonas for the first time tonight. "You trusted them, so they trusted you to do what they wanted."

Jonas dropped his eyes. "I don't even know which you mean by 'they'--"

"It is possible to be played by elements of both sides, Jonas," Daniel said.

"Thanks--that's encouraging," Jonas said. He flopped back against the couch again, spreading his arms across the back.

Daniel didn't apologize for being blunt. "People want to trust you," he said instead. "I read the Pangara reports. It's important to have someone about whom the other side isn't immediately suspicious, and it's good not to _be_ someone about whom others _should_ be suspicious."

"I thought that was your job," Jonas said, only half-joking.

"It depends on who the other side are," Daniel said, and considering how many of their major enemies knew his face, that was a good point. "The point is, it's not a bad quality."

"Look where it got me back home," Jonas said. "Being likeable isn't the same as being a good diplomat--knowing when to push and when to pull back, especially in new and unknown territory, _that's_ what matters." Jonas was good at making friends; Daniel wasn't, as it turned out, but sometimes one had to be a little harsh and not just firm, and that was the one thing Jonas had tended to shy away from on Kelowna. His forte was in talking to people and encouraging them to talk back; Daniel had experience in challenging rules and closing deals.

"It's not some straightforward equation to be balanced," Daniel said.

"But I think I stand too far on one side of that balance sometimes," Jonas confided.

Daniel was silent for a while, considering, then admitted, "I don't know where I stand on it; I'm not really sure of a lot just now. But we never know off-world. _You_ notice things about people that others don't; that's a good place to start if you want to know whom to trust."

"Hey, if we're talking about gaining trust, speak for yourself--you've pulled at least as many undercover SG missions as anyone else."

"And if we need to gain people's trust to get close enough to poison them, I might be an asset. I'd like to think that's not the end goal of most of our diplomatic missions."

Jonas grimaced at the edge he heard in the words. "Come on," he said. "I've heard about you, and I've read everything you've negotiated for Earth. It's not just undercover stuff--"

Daniel sighed and put down his pen. "Jonas, listen, this isn't a competition. You've studied my work, and now I'm studying something you finished and memorized this morning over breakfast. You pull and I'll push, yeah? You can...help Sam solve some technological problem and the rest of us will cover you, or Jack and I can lean hard on a foreign official and rely on you to keep an eye on public opinion. That's what this is--do your part, and we'll be there for the rest."

"Yeah," Jonas said, looking at his feet.

"Okay?"

"Yeah," he said again. "Okay." When he looked up, Daniel had pulled one foot onto his chair and was hugging his knee to his chest. Jonas grinned. "Very inspirational."

Daniel rolled his eyes, but, before he could squeeze out a smile, he said, "Speaking of your diplomatic training, what exactly is the situation with Madrona now?"

Jonas managed to keep his expression in place and said, "No one's started a civil war, which is a good sign. The surviving Kelownans, Tiranians, and Andari have merged into a single country that they're calling Langara. With some help from the Madronans' climate control and some aid from us via SG-9, they're rebuilding."

"It must be hard."

"Yeah, going from technology almost as advanced as Earth's to the bare bones of something resembling infrastructure--"

"I wasn't talking about them," Daniel interrupted. "You don't go with SG-9 when they check up on Langara, do you?"

Jonas shrugged. "They don't want me there. Which is probably, well, a good thing, since there might be some bloodshed if SG-1 went instead. The colonel might murder someone."

"Yeah, Jack has this irrational lack of tolerance for blatant treachery," Daniel said flatly.

Jonas felt his eyebrows creeping upward in surprise. He knew what the rest of SG-1 felt about Kelowna--there wasn't a lot of comfort to be found in that whole mess, but his team's support helped--but hadn't realized that Daniel felt the same way. Then again, Daniel spat out random facts from his Ascension once in a while, usually without noticing it, including the information about naquadria, so maybe there was some unconscious hostility left behind there, too.

Besides, the one thing about the real live Daniel Jackson that didn't seem to match up to the rumors was that spark of passion and indignation about injustice that he was reputed to carry around. Jonas hadn't really seen that, aside from the brief flurry of action just when he'd remembered about Rya'c and Bra'tac on Erebus. But maybe that spark was still there, just as keen but quieter, not quite as brash as the stories about the teenaged prodigy seemed to imply.

"I'm pretty sure he'd rather we left your people to rot," Daniel was saying. "Something about helping people who are actively holding an unjustified grudge against one of ours. Luckily, General Hammond thinks withholding all humanitarian aid would be cruel and unfair to the majority of the people who didn't even know there was such a thing as a naquadria bomb."

"I get it!" Jonas snapped. "I hate it. What do you want me to say?"

Daniel set his chin on his knee and continued watching him. "So you do get angry. I was starting to wonder."

Jonas deflated. He'd found early in his career that being vocally angry was both uncomfortable and unproductive, but he supposed Daniel, who seemed to seek out confrontation deliberately, probably had a different view of the matter. "I don't think about home much," he said. "What's the point, you know?"

"I know," Daniel said, this time with a hint of sympathy in his tone, and of _course_ he would know a bit of what it was like, even if their situations were completely different. "I _am_ very sorry about what happened. Do you miss people from Kelowna?"

"Not the ministers," Jonas said wryly. "But I had friends there. I know what you're thinking--I was wrong about the project and the people I was working for, so maybe I'm wrong about--"

"That's not what I was thinking," Daniel said. "I'm sure your true friends knew you weren't a traitor. Whether they would to speak against your government on your behalf..."

"Yeah," Jonas said. He shook his head. "I don't know that I would have spoken up."

Daniel tilted his head. "It's a difficult situation," he said tactfully, because lack of formal training didn't mean he hadn't learned how to be diplomatic once in a while. "But some people are worth being trusted, and for the ones who aren't..." He raised his eyebrows. "The team won't let you down. I think you know that by now."

Jonas let himself smile, grateful for the sentiment. "I think I do." A thought struck him while he searched for a less uncomfortable topic, and he leaned forward conspiratorially. "Hey, so, now that we're teammates, we've gotta have each others' backs, right?"

"Yeah," Daniel drawled. "I think I just said that. Why, what do you want?"

"Do you know Jacquie Rush very well?"

For a while, Daniel didn't answer. Then he blinked and said, "Who?"

"You know," Jonas said. He looked over his shoulder, but not many people were wandering around at the hour, and certainly not Jacquie. It wasn't meant seriously (mostly)--he'd been through this once with Sam and was going to ask the woman out on a date sometime, _really, he was_, and he just wanted to see what Daniel's answer would be, anyway. "Lieutenant Rush. She's a nurse in the infirmary."

"Oh," Daniel said. He frowned. "Does she have light brown hair?"

Jonas rolled his eyes. "Yeah, like fifty percent of the people on this base."

"I think it's less than that."

"That's not the point. Do you think you could put in a good word for me?"

"A good word?" Daniel repeated, a confused look settling onto his features.

"You know," Jonas said.

Clearing his throat, Daniel looked back down at his desk. "The nurses don't like me any more than they like you."

"But all the medical people think you're fascinating," Jonas said, wincing when he heard himself. "I think they want to study your brain," he added.

Daniel raised his eyebrows. "They actually have _your_ precognitive brain tumor in some lab."

Jonas sat up. That was news to him. "Really," he said. "Where is it?"

"No, Jonas, you can't have it," Daniel said.

Grinning, Jonas said, "Fine. Still. Do you think you could, uh, find out if she'd be receptive?"

"You realize I'm probably the least qualified person on this base for that task?" Daniel pointed out. He'd gone back to reading the file on his desk, scratching his head and very firmly _not_ looking up, until Jonas realized--

"Are you blushing?" Jonas said incredulously. Daniel was startled into straightening. Jonas laughed. "You're blushing! I made Daniel Jackson blush!"

"Shut up," Daniel mumbled. For the first time in...well, a few weeks, at least, he looked his age rather than like one of the hardened veterans around here. "Jonas, you're ridiculous."

"_I'm_ ridiculous? Let me introduce you to your life's story, Mr. Kettle."

"Kettle?" Daniel echoed.

"You know," Jonas said. "There's an Earth expression about the kettle calling the teapot black. I think that's what it was. Or maybe it was a frying pan...anyway, it's about hypocrisy."

Daniel frowned. "I haven't heard that one," he said. "Teal'c told me one about a short and stout teapot, though. Janet's daughter taught it to him."

"Was it about hypocrisy?"

"Actually, I think it was about boiling water."

"Why--" Jonas started.

"I have no idea," Daniel said, though Jonas was gratified to see that he was actually smiling a little bit this time.

"Well, you, me, and Teal'c...we aliens've gotta stick together in the face of Tau'ri madness."

"You're not talking about an alien conspiracy, are you?" Daniel said.

Jonas laughed aloud, throwing up his hands. "What, is that some kind of inside joke? That's exactly what Teal'c told me the first time I said that to him."

"Well, we aliens have done some rather controversial things here," Daniel said. "Has Sam told you about General Bauer and the naquadah enhanced--"

"Nuclear weapon, yeah," Jonas said. Despite feeling recently like he should prove himself able and professional--as the newest, as well as the one being allowed to stay even despite Daniel Jackson's return--he found himself leaning forward, hoping just a little bit for the kind of reminiscing story that he sometimes heard from more experienced personnel. "It's a good thing you guys tried to slow it down, even if it didn't help. I should know first-hand what happens when people don't question authority."

"I guess you would," Daniel said thoughtfully. "It's a fine line, though--a dangerous one. I don't think I fully realized that at the time."

"Is that, uh...why you don't want to keep looking for the knowledge of the Ascended Ancients?" Jonas asked carefully. "Dangerously fine lines?"

Daniel drew his eyebrows down low over narrowed eyes. "There's no telling whether there's anything to remember, anyway, or how much would be useful. And yes, I don't know if it would be safe."

And since everyone from Sam to Colonel O'Neill to Teal'c to General Hammond accepted that as 'good enough,' and since Jonas knew there would always be something he was missing with regard to Daniel, he didn't push it any further. Besides, for all they knew, if they kept trying the memory device, Daniel's brains might turn into energy and dribble out of his head or something. "Okay," Jonas said, "but...it doesn't bother you, not knowing...you know...that much?"

"It doesn't matter how I feel about it."

"It matters to you," Jonas said. When Daniel didn't answer, he pointed out, "I _am_ allowed to be interested in your wellbeing. I know I'm the new guy here and you're Daniel Jackson, but you also just said the team's what we can always count on."

"I don't need you worrying about me," Daniel said.

"Well, tough," Jonas answered, for lack of anything more pithy to say. "I'm not going away. No one understands what you went through, but no one understands Kelowna, either, and they still try to make me talk or...or..."

"Yeah," Daniel said.

"You should have fun more often," Jonas decided. "You're kind of depressing."

To his surprise, Daniel laughed, then stopped, looking equally surprised. Apparently, that had been the right thing to say, because Daniel set his feet--already without boots--on top of his desk and wiggled his toes. "No promises," he said, and this time, it was a joke.

"What was it like in the beginning?" he asked, trying not to sound too eager and knowing he was probably failing. "When the SGC was just starting?"

"It was...frustrating," Daniel said, leaning back in his chair. "Different from how it is now--we were focused on different things. What was it like joining SG-1 when I was dead?"

"Weird," Jonas said emphatically. He thought about it, then added, "And really cool. No offense--it wasn't personal." Daniel grinned. Jonas decided that he'd try to make that a more common sight--being the newest guy on the team didn't mean he couldn't look out for his teammates, too.

"I never welcomed you onto the team," Daniel said abruptly. "I wasn't sure it was appropriate, really, and you don't need my blessing, but--"

"Welcome back," Jonas said before he could finish. "I'm looking forward to working with you."

Daniel picked up his mug of coffee and gave him a mock salute. "So am I. Now, either finish your paperwork, or give it to me and go to bed. We've got a lot of work ahead of us."

XXXXX

_Concluded in Epilogue: Beginnings_


	19. Epilogue: Beginnings

**XXXXX  
Epilogue: Beginnings  
XXXXX**

_**28 January 2005; O'Neill Residence, Earth; 2300 hrs**_

_**(17 months later)**_

"There are no repeating patterns of pi," Carter declared loudly.

"No," Jonas insisted, pointing a finger at her. "Sam, you just haven't tried it in base eight."

Carter stuck out her tongue at him.

"Ah-ha!" Daniel said, holding up one finger. "I get it! See? Pro-cla-ru-sh! Ta-o-nas! You see?"

"That's where we just went," Jack said.

"Not _just_, sir," Carter said, shaking her finger at him. "We went there...about...a month ago. You just got frozen in between."

"Can I get frozen next time?" Jonas said.

"No, guys, that's _not_ the _point_," Daniel said. "We should rename all of the planets like Proclarush Taonas. It's the only thing that makes sense."

"That has nothing to do with pi," Jack said.

"Ah, but what about a naquadria pie?" he answered.

Jonas made a face. "What?"

Daniel looked confused. "I dunno. What?"

"I had a dream about naquadria pie once," Carter said.

Jack snorted. She would.

A shadow loomed past Jack's line of sight and plucked bottles away from Daniel and Jonas. "You have consumed enough alcohol," Teal'c told them. He reached for Carter's next, but she hung on more determinedly to hers. "Very well," Teal'c conceded. It was probably the wiser decision; her aim almost seemed to improve, instead of worsen, after a few beers.

"Ah-ah, don't even try it with me, big guy," Jack said. He took a sip of beer and watched Daniel try to balance an orange on top of the bottle in Carter's startlingly steady hand. "You guys are so much more fun this way," he said. He nudged Daniel with a foot. "If you'd turned twenty-one sooner, we could've done this legally more often."

"I'm not the one who made up my ID for this planet, General," Daniel said. He caught the orange as it rolled off and tried to bounce it once on the ground. "General," he repeated, then made the somewhat scrunched expression he always made when he was trying not to laugh.

"Watch it," Jack warned him.

"I'm going to miss the colonel," Jonas said.

Jack spread his arms. "I'm right here!"

"But you're not the colonel anymore," Jonas explained.

"_I'm_ the colonel now," Carter said. "Well. Light colonel."

"That's right," Jack said. "You tell 'em, Sam."

She sighed happily. "Look at that," she said, pointing at the stars. "Aren't they beautiful?"

"Ooh--shiny stars," Daniel said, and Jack couldn't tell if he was teasing her or just moving rapidly toward drunkenness. Then he leaned back against the house behind him, looking in the direction of the telescope, and said, "I miss my room here."

"Want it back?" Jack asked. "S'not like I kicked you out."

"No," Daniel said. "It doesn't make sense anymore," which apparently made sense of some kind in his head.

"Hey," Jack realized. "I have an idea. Daniel and Teal'c should get an apartment."

"The Pentagon would _love_ that," Daniel said.

"Nyan still has to check in with the SGC, and _he_ doesn't know security codes," Jonas pointed out. "You want to get permission for Teal'c the _shol'va_ and Daniel I-used-to-be-Ascended Jackson to live off-base?"

Daniel frowned at Jonas. "Is that what you call me in your head?"

"I don't care," Jack said. "Jonas, _you've_ been living off-base for a few months and no one's compromised security."

Jonas blushed, though he couldn't seem to control the dopey grin taking over his face. "I haven't...actually moved in or--"

"You just sleep over at Jacquie's lot," Carter said, poking him.

"How is Captain Rush?" Teal'c asked him.

The question seemed to stump Jonas's famed intellect, and he was reduced to scowling. The expression looked so out of place on Jonas's face that Jack laughed.

"I hear Pete Shanahan's back in town," Jonas said abruptly, as if in retaliation. He made a fist and did something that Jack suspected was supposed to be a friendly punch but ended up missing Carter's shoulder by almost an inch.

"So?" Carter said grumpily, though she didn't seem surprised about the news.

"Perhaps I should visit Detective Shanahan before returning to the SGC," Teal'c suggested, his tone saying that the visit would be more than just a friendly visit if Carter so much as implied that she'd want that.

But, of course... "Don't you dare," she said, shaking her finger threateningly at the Jaffa looming over her. "He didn't do anything wrong. You know, if I could've just told him--"

"Carter," Jack said. She'd never complained about it aloud before (while sober), even after Shanahan broke it off--apparently, detectives didn't much like puzzles they weren't allowed to solve--but Jack wasn't an idiot and knew she'd been unhappy with the situation. "Rules are rules. You know that. In fact...you've gotta be the enforcer now and keep these kids in line."

She looked at him, and he knew they were both thinking the same thing, if from different sides. This had been Jack's team--first Carter and Teal'c, and then Daniel, and then Jonas, and then all of them--and now it wasn't anymore. "I don't know if I want to be the colonel," Carter said.

"You are well-deserving of your rank, Colonel Carter," Teal'c said.

Carter sighed heavily and sat back against the railing, the telescope above her head. She let her legs fall straight out in front of her, one foot pressing against Jack's and the other leg tangled with Daniel's. "I don't mind being promoted to Lieutenant Colonel," she explained. She took a sip from her bottle--or tried, since it was empty--then stopped and squinted inside it. "Actually, I kind of like that part. But now I have to be _the_ colonel, and I don't know if I want to."

"Well, I don't know if I want to be the man," Jack offered.

"I don't know if I want to do more paperwork," Daniel grumped, scowling at Jack, as if Jack had done something horribly wrong by finally making him the head of Social Sciences on paper as well as in practice.

They turned expectantly to Jonas. Jonas shrugged and flopped backward to land on Teal'c. "Don't look at me," Jonas said, settling comfortably with Teal'c's feet as a pillow. "I'm happy."

"You're always happy," Daniel said without looking at him.

"I'm compensating for you," Jonas answered with a grin.

Daniel bit into his orange. He wrinkled his nose (probably at the taste of the peel he'd forgotten to take off) and said, "Whatever you say, probie."

Teal'c jerked, which knocked Jonas off his temporary cushion. "Probie?" Jonas echoed, lying flat on his back. "What's that mean?"

"Probationary fireman," Daniel said matter-of-factly.

"What," Jack said lazily. That didn't make sense, even for Daniel.

"Don't be ridiculous," Sam said. "We're not firemen."

Daniel blinked. "Huh. No, I guess not."

"Teal'c, have you been corrupting the children with television again?" Jack said.

"Indeed I have not," Teal'c said. Something in his tone made Jack squint at him through the moonlight, but the Jaffa was staring at Daniel. It didn't matter. Jack had given up on trying to decipher their alien inside jokes a long time ago.

"Is Anubis really gone?" Jonas said a moment later.

"Yep," Jack said.

"Are we sure?"

"Nope," Daniel said.

"What about Fifth?" Jonas said.

"I don't know," Carter said.

"Oh," Jonas said. "That sucks."

"Indeed," Teal'c agreed.

Daniel sighed. "Everything's changing now," he said.

"Aw," Carter said. She scooted around and wrapped an arm around his neck. "Not everything. I can still kick your ass in the gym."

"Oddly," Daniel said, in the careful way he sometimes spoke when tipsy or on morphine, "that is not very comforting."

She squeezed him tighter, then grabbed Teal'c's leg with her other arm and managed to loop Jonas somewhere in between. "Well, you're still my favorite guys ever."

"Hey," Jack said. "What about me?"

"Can't reach, sir," she said, but she made an approximation of a hug with her feet around his ankle.

"Perhaps it would be wise to relocate," Teal'c suggested, his leg trapped between her arm and Jonas's back.

"Why?" Daniel said, and promptly began to slip backward off the ladder leading up to the roof. Teal'c grabbed him and pulled him back. "Huh," Daniel said, frowning at the ladder. "How did that get there?"

"Relocate away," Jack declared, pointing at the door going inside, and fell on his ass somewhere on the way in.

XXXXX

It was the next afternoon before Jack woke up.

Teal'c was outside, in the back, doing a basic martial arts drill that Jack recognized from the Jaffa's training sessions with Daniel. Just looking at it now made his head hurt. Jack crawled out of a pile of sheets on the floor that he'd apparently used as a bed--_god_, he was going to be sore--and detoured past a still-sleeping Sam and Jonas to find Daniel staring at a mug at the kitchen table.

"Not thirsty?" Jack said. His head throbbed lightly in time with his voice.

"Mph," Daniel said. "Coffee seemed like a good idea at the time."

"Daniel logic," Jack said, easing into a chair. "If it can't be solved with coffee..." He waved a hand, too muzzy to find a good way to finish the sentence. "Suck it up."

"Your pep talks are terrible," Daniel said.

"Well, you don't have to listen to 'em anymore," Jack said, jerking a thumb toward Carter. "That's her job now. You think you guys are gonna be okay without me?"

Daniel didn't look at him. "Are you gonna be okay without us?" He peeked upward.

"I'm not the one who's going to be running around on alien planets," Jack pointed out.

"Exactly," Daniel said. He rubbed his eyes, then looked up again. "Every version of SG-1 has included you, Sam, and Teal'c. Now it's different. And I've tried leaving it behind and never lasted more than a year or so."

"Okay, first of all, going glowy and then getting kicked out of the club doesn't count," Jack said, "and second...you're young. I would've had to get out of the field eventually, before I became more of a liability than an asset--"

"Jack," Daniel sighed. "You're--"

"When you've got as many years of combat in your joints as I do, _then_ you can tell me I'm not that old," Jack said.

Daniel made a face but didn't argue. None of them, old or young, was a stranger to injuries. Jack knew that all of them--with the _possible_ exception of Teal'c--had lingering aches from injuries that were tolerable but would probably never go away completely, at least not soon. Carter had dislocated her shoulder twice after that time she'd crushed it falling headfirst out of a wormhole. Jack knew that the arm Daniel had broken just before his Ascension still ached after long missions, and Jonas joked that he was still a little prophetic, because the bullet hole in his leg could predict the weather (but not as well as the weather channel).

For himself, Jack didn't even want to think about the number of problems he'd had with his knees and any number of other limbs; the last thing he wanted was to be some idiot who didn't realize his body had had enough. He wasn't there yet, but the day would come, and then he would only be holding his people back.

"Besides," Jack added, "I'm in charge. I can still go through the 'gate whenever I want."

"Better you at Hammond's desk than someone who doesn't know what he's doing," Daniel said eventually. "And better Hammond in Washington than someone like Simmons or Kinsey."

"Thanks," Jack said. "Your pep talks suck, too."

"I'm just saying it could be a lot worse," Daniel said. "You can choose to be encouraged by it or not."

Jack rolled his eyes and regretted it when his head reminded him of the evils of alcohol. "You just don't want some general who won't listen to you."

"True," Daniel said, not denying it. "Speaking of listening to me--"

"Still a 'no' on Atlantis, Mr. Jackson," Jack said.

"You know, Elizabeth Weir really wants me on--"

"Well, then it's a good thing _I'm_ your commanding officer, not Weir."

"How come Rodney McKay gets to go?" he said, sounding annoyed. "I might not be a physicist, but I'm much more qualified than he is to work with Ancient culture, not to mention the physical aspects that are necessary for any field excursion--"

"It gets McKay out of our galaxy," Jack pointed out. "The answer's not gonna change."

Daniel sighed. "It's the city of the Ancients, Jack. You don't think I should be there to help assess and set up, at least?"

"I need you here, period," Jack told him, not bothering to add that there was no way he was sending Daniel to another galaxy before they knew it was sustainable or that the expedition had a way home. "They've got McKay for setup, remember, and whatever else he is, Carter says he's good at what he does. Are you getting restless already?"

"I just want to see what it looks like," he said wistfully. "It must be _amazing_."

"Oh, no, I know you--you'll see what it looks like, and then you'll push a button and end up looking at it for the next five years and pretending you don't hear me yelling at you to get your ass back home. Nuh-uh. You're staying"--Jack pointed at the floor--"right here."

Daniel raised his eyebrows and looked around the kitchen.

"On Earth," Jack clarified.

"I spent so many years traveling," Daniel said. "I don't mean just SG missions--I mean _moving_. Really moving, looking for new things. I thought...maybe...this could be what I was looking for."

For a time after the Descension and the attack on Abydos, Daniel had seemed oddly content as he was, aside from brief bouts of enthusiasm about some new discovery, most of which had, as usual, ended up being a bust, anyway. And while Jack had been just fine with the way things were, Daniel was a person for whom routine missions to alien worlds could actually be considered a sort of complacency, if a sort that was filled with constant but familiar uncertainty. The prospect of Atlantis had stirred that fire again, and Jack found himself both relieved to see the wanderlust still there--it was such an integral part of who Daniel was--and terrified that Daniel would leave again and not come back this time.

"There are other ways to do that," Jack finally said. "You'll get to see Atlantis someday. Maybe eventually we'll clean up the Goa'uld and...and you can get yourself reassigned there," he made himself add. "But not now. I need you _here_ now."

And Daniel nodded, still looking disappointed, but understanding. They'd just blasted Anubis out of the sky and the Goa'uld were scattered, and if they were going to make a move toward squashing the Goa'uld once and for all, this was their chance. More than that, the SGC had nearly been torn apart by Kinsey and had barely been held together by, ironically, the new civilian commander they'd been so worried about, and now Jack had to step in and fill some very daunting shoes. The SGC and the human efforts against the Goa'uld needed SG-1 right now--all of them--and so did Jack.

"One day," Daniel added, and Jack knew the itch was back now, suppressed, but just waiting for a chance to explode and propel Daniel somewhere new and exciting. "Before, I always had something specific I was trying to do. I don't know what to think now, sometimes."

"There's more to this job than quests and grudges," Jack said.

"It gives you something to aim for, though."

"All right--you want something to aim for? Look outside."

Daniel stared at him for a moment, then looked out the window, quickly scanning across everything he could see. As much as he played the part of the person who focused on non-military aspects, there were things one learned growing up the way Daniel had, and he had expanded that part of his role with Jonas on the team. Jack had no doubt that Daniel had unconsciously mapped out the scene outside, at least enough to be able to act if someone suddenly ordered him to move or find cover. "This isn't reconnaissance," Jack said.

Startled, Daniel said, "I'm not...what..."

"Just look where I'm pointing."

He looked and said, "They're your neighbors, Jack. And, unless their family has quadrupled in size since I lived here, it looks like a lot of their friends are visiting them."

"You've fought for them," Jack told him. "Probably saved their lives at least a few times, even traded your life for them. Maybe you should meet a few of the people you're fighting for."

Daniel's brow wrinkled. "It doesn't matter who they are. They're people who...who have lives, and that's enough."

Jack felt his lips twist. "Did we drill that into your head?"

But Daniel's answering glare was defiant. "I don't need the United States Air Force to tell me that people deserve to live."

"Yeah, well, maybe we forgot to mention that you deserve that, too," Jack said. "And I don't mean just survival. You've missed out on a lot, being at the SGC. You can still catch up on some of it. Now, I know this doesn't seem like much, but believe me, it'll be a lot newer than it sounds. Here's what I'm thinking. You and Teal'c find a place to live, and I'll convince the Pentagon that you can keep each other in line--"

"Wait, wait, wait," Daniel said, squeezing his eyes shut and holding up a hand. "What?"

"You weren't _that_ drunk last night," Jack said, fully aware that they might have been pretty damn tipsy and maybe a little more than that, but alcohol had only been an excuse for their rare chance to relax so much without thinking about ranks or battles or responsibilities. The recent months had been hard on all of them--probably harder for the rest of them than for Jack, who had mostly been asleep in a stasis pod--and none of them except Jack seemed to understand the concept of occasional relaxation. "You heard me."

"About living off-base?" Daniel said. "You were serious?"

Jack shrugged. "You interested? I know you wanted to stay at the SGC until you got your memories settled, but it's been over a year. You guys deserve a life. It's the least you deserve."

Daniel straightened. "Are they going to let us? I mean, Jonas has Captain Rush to help fill in his story, and I'm pretty sure I could manage with a cover about being a foreigner, but Teal'c doesn't exactly _try_ very hard to blend in."

"He's not gonna get arrested for mixing metaphors and wearing old-fashioned hats," Jack pointed out. "We'll work on it with him. Besides, Junior's gone now, and we can make something up to cover his tattoo and everything."

"Teal'c lost his symbiote a long time ago, Jack."

"Y'think? I've been a general for five days. I'm working as fast as I can."

"I don't mean..." Daniel said. "I know you've done a lot for Teal'c and my status here--"

"So what's the problem?" Jack said.

Daniel looked past him, as if to check that the others were still sleeping or out of earshot, then said quietly, "Do I just replace one homeworld for another?"

"No, god," Jack said, knowing better than that. Whatever Daniel did or didn't remember about Abydos, he was still adamantly loyal to the place, and he fiercely, if quietly, cherished the memories he did have left. He still introduced himself as Abydonian, and Jack wasn't about to be the one who tried to change that. "Look, we can't get back what you lost, but we can do our best with something new."

He nodded but didn't answer.

"So?" Jack said. "Whaddya think? Yes or no?"

"Well...yes, I suppose," Daniel said slowly, then actually smiled a little. "Yeah, Jack, that would be really...nice. Thank you. I'll talk to Teal'c. Uh. I don't know how one usually looks for a residence, but--"

"We'll give you a hand," Jack said off-handedly. "Well, it'll probably be assessed for security first, and if they want to run a credit check it'll run up against us...so you might not get much of a choice, actually, but I promise it'll be an okay place."

Daniel turned his smile downward at his mug and finally took a sip of coffee. Jack decided that meant all was well. "I've seen a lot of a lot of planets," he said.

"Welcome to Earth," Jack said. "Time to start exploring something other than Cheyenne Mountain and the roads between there and this house."

"I've been some other places," Daniel said. "I went to Chicago twice_. _And Honduras."

"You were blindfolded for half of Honduras," Jack said dryly. He was _never_ sending Daniel and Jonas alone to a South American jungle again.

"And Egypt. And Minnesota."

"Anyone who lumps Chicago and Minnesota with Ancient Egyptian ruins and the Fountain of Youth has some major exploration to do."

"_And_ I went to a Department of Motor Vehicles building when I got my license."

"Okay," Jack conceded, "_that's_ pretty alien to everyone."

Daniel cupped his hands around his mug. It was actually _his_ mug, Jack saw with a pang of nostalgia, the one Rothman had given him that said _'When I Grow Up, I Want To Be An Archaeologist'_--Daniel must have left it in this house years ago and never taken it back to base with him. It had been hard to get used to a quiet house after Daniel's Ascension, but dealing with the extra baggage he'd brought back from the higher planes--especially the baggage he couldn't remember--had been hard enough without having to worry about whether or not they were being objective enough about each other. Now that Jack wasn't SG-1 anymore, it was only going to get harder.

"Uh, Jack?"

Jack raised his eyebrows. "Daniel?"

"I don't know what people do," Daniel said, then grimaced. "I mean. The SGC has been my life for...well, almost literally for as long as I can remember these days. What do people do outside of that?"

For some reason, that particular thought had never occurred to Jack. "Sure you know," he said, confused. "You've seen people living lives everywhere in about a thousand different ways. I bet you could write a really boring report on how people spend their free time."

Daniel opened his mouth but didn't seem to know what to say. It was a while before he said, sounding awkward, "It was always...theoretical then. Part of the job."

Jack scratched his head. He would always have regrets about the way Daniel had been treated, both by them and by circumstance. People new to the Stargate program thought Daniel was a little _off_ mostly because of the chunks of normal life he didn't remember; Jack thought most of it was actually because they were _all_ a little off, and Daniel's upbringing in a front-line facility in a war just made him a little more so than others. Maybe, though, they could fix some of it now.

"You look constipated," Daniel said. "You're about to impart wisdom, aren't you?"

Jack gave him a dirty look. Daniel returned an expression that he would have called 'innocent' eight years ago. "You betcha," he said anyway, and Daniel stilled and paid attention when he said, "Here goes. You've done a lot in your life. Well, and death. Deaths."

Daniel snorted. "I only count the one, personally. The others were temporar--"

"Shut up and listen, all right? You're a highly decorated employee of our military at twenty-one. The hardest things most people can imagine...you've had worse done to you. There's nothing out there"--Jack waved a hand in the direction of the nearest window--"you can't handle. You can...go explore a library and talk to neighbors, I dunno. Maybe meet a pretty girl who hasn't known you since you were fourteen and pimply."

"I was not--" Daniel started, then cut himself off, shaking his head. He laughed. "It's been a wild ride, hasn't it?"

Jack spread his arms. "And your life's just beginning. You should start actually living it. Tell you what: that's your next big mission. Integrate into Earth society and have some fun."

Daniel squinted at his coffee.

"That's an order," Jack added. "For what that's worth."

Daniel smiled. "All right, General." He looked up again, and, despite the uncertainty that hung constantly over their lives, there was pride shining clear in his eyes. "Jack, I don't know if I ever said 'congratulations' on your promotion."

"You did last night, around when Carter started singing the digits of pi," Jack reminded him.

"It's...you know...it's really--"

Jack brushed an imaginary speck of dirt from his shirt. "An honor to follow my command?"

"Well, I don't know if I'd call it an _honor_," Daniel drawled, but he was still smiling.

"This is how it goes," Jack said. "Things change."

Once upon a time, Daniel had been wide-eyed and gangly-limbed, and they'd watched carefully to make sure he didn't get himself killed. Now, he deferred to more experienced officers, but plenty of officers were willing to defer to him, too, as someone who could be translator, diplomat, fighter, spy, or researcher when the situation called for it. Jack had been afraid of molding Daniel into their SG officer, but now that it had happened, there was also a sense of pride in it--and maybe that was wrong or a little crazy, but they lived in a crazy world.

The four of them on the new SG-1 would work the way only a team who'd been together so long could do--the alien-speak shorthand Daniel and Teal'c had shared since the beginning had developed into an almost sixth-sense awareness of each other; Carter and Daniel's trick of finishing each other's thoughts had turned into a complicated and frightening triangle of brainpower with the addition of Jonas; and Teal'c had a way of always knowing when to put his knowledge and muscles firmly behind Carter's lead and when to be the friend and leader for them all to draw on. It wasn't like any crack military team Jack could imagine, but there was no question they were the best.

"I guess you're right," Daniel said. "We'll be fine. You trained us well."

He smirked. "I did, didn't I?"

"Don't get too full of yourself, or I'll lock all your files in your desk, and you know perfectly well that you'd never get the desk open without having to ask Sam to pick the lock."

Jack frowned. "You have keys to Hammond's desk? How come I didn't get keys? It's _my_ desk."

"You did," Daniel told him. "You dropped them while juggling my _stuff_, Jack."

"Well, give 'em back!"

"Oh, admit it--you're not planning to open a drawer, anyway."

Jack started to give some indignant response--it was the principle of the thing--but shrugged and let it go. He was probably right, and Walter could deal with it if it turned out to be a problem, which it probably wouldn't, anyway. "Whatever. I trust you."

"I'm...kidding," Daniel said, looking surprised at the acquiescence. "I put the keys in my desk. I was going to give them to you when you eventually realized you couldn't open your drawers."

"Well, I _did_ realize already," Jack pointed out, then admitted, "But I figured it wasn't important." Daniel shook his head. More seriously, he said, "Forget the drawers. I'm...probably gonna need to lean on you for a while."

"I'm...trying to figure out which definition of the word 'lean' you're--"

"I need someone who'll tell me when I'm wrong," Jack said.

Daniel was quiet for a while. Then he looked out the window, where Teal'c was still training, and nodded in the direction of the living room where Carter and Jonas were, presumably, still sleeping. "Do you doubt we would?" he said.

"Carter's got her job to worry about."

"She knows you won't bring her up on charges for disagreeing with you."

"But it's still always going to be an issue," Jack said, shaking his head. "I need someone who'll stop me in the halls and yell at me if...not that you should do that," he added quickly, though he wasn't too worried. Their arguments had become legend around the base--they did sometimes use hallways, elevators, the infirmary, and the briefing room for heated debates--but aside from a few glitches in the first years, Daniel didn't directly undermine his authority in front of allies, enemies, or people sharing their chain of command. Decorum wasn't red tape when it had real and important consequences. "You know what I mean."

"Yeah," Daniel said. "You know I'm with you, Jack. We all are."

"I can't officially give you guys rank--except Carter--but people listen to you, anyway," he went on. "I mean, you aliens have practically taken over SG-1, Kearney follows Teal'c's lead in any and all security matters, and I just gave you social sciences, so...and even that was because some higher-ups consider you more Earthling than alien."

"We're aware that we'll always be aliens to Earth," Daniel told him. "We don't need rank, and we certainly don't need the brass getting paranoid about aliens suddenly stepping into positions of power in a very sensitive military organization. It's okay; we all know it, and we don't care. We're with you, that's all."

"Not that I couldn't do it on my own," Jack had to add. "I'm a general now."

Daniel snorted. "Yeah, they gave you a star and everything. Just try not to drown in your own bullshit, Jack."

Jack feigned indignation. "That's 'don't drown in your own bullshit, _sir_' to you, Jackson."

He never tired of hearing Daniel laugh.

XXXXX

"This is it," Carter said, once the alcohol had made it through their systems and a little bit of dignity had been recouped.

"The end of an era," Daniel said.

"And the beginning of a new one," Jonas put in, having falling easily into his half of the pessimist-optimist game the two of them often ran together.

"Ah, you guys'll do fine without me," Jack said.

Daniel raised his eyebrows. "I was talking about Hammond, really, but we'll miss your command in the field, too, Jack."

"Smart-ass," Jack told him. "It's gonna be a relief not having to deal with _you_ in the field anymore."

"I am certain that Colonel Carter will fill your footwear adequately," Teal'c said, wearing a little smirk that told them he was joking.

"Not physically," Jonas said. "Your feet are bigger, General."

"And having dealt with the general's footwear in the wash a few times," Daniel put in, "I suggest that Colonel Carter not contaminate her feet."

"Hey!" Jack said, but Carter was grinning happily at her team. "If you guys mutiny, I'll fire you," he said, though he knew if there were to be any sort of mutiny at the SGC that involved these people, he'd probably be in on it.

"Because our _careers_ are what we'd be worried about if we chose to mutiny," Daniel said.

Jack gave him a suspicious look and got a blank _'what-did-I-do'_ in return.

"Sir," Carter said, attempting to bring some sense of decorum back, "thank you very much--"

"For the beer?" Jack said.

"Among other things," she said. "We'll do you proud."

"Good," Jack said, "because there's a meeting with the brass tomorrow morning, and I expect you all to be there."

"Uh..." Jonas said. "Why?"

"Hey, they've gotta start getting used to you guys' being my go-to people," Jack said. He didn't say aloud that he was actually getting _nervous_ despite himself. Jack O'Neill didn't _get_ nervous talking to or arguing with higher-ups; it was what he did.

Except that now, he was kind of one of the higher-ups, if not the highest of the highers, and his immediate responsibility wasn't to his three- or four- or five-man team, but rather to an entire secret facility of people. Things were going to change for sure--he wasn't George Hammond and wasn't going to try to be--but it could become very difficult for him and for everyone else if he wasn't careful. He didn't like having to be careful like that. He was _good_ at being Colonel O'Neill and SG-1 leader; commanding the base would be very different.

His team--_Carter's_ team--knew what he was thinking, of course, and despite all words of confidence, they had to be worried, too--maybe not so much about themselves, since they'd followed her command without him before, but certainly about the SGC under Jack. They'd all had Hammond to depend on for long enough that this couldn't be a seamless transition--there were sure to be times in the near future when Jack had no idea what to do.

No one addressed it directly. Daniel, still their diplomat when the situation called for it, said lightly, "By which you mean you have no idea how to answer if someone asks you what's happening to all the funding that goes into our research and so forth."

"Exactly," Jack said proudly. "I don't want to know that. That's what I have you for."

"Of course we'll be there, sir," Carter promised. Turning to her team, she said, "Anyone need a ride anywhere?"

"I think the rest of us are going back to base," Jonas said, gesturing at himself, Teal'c, and Daniel. "We can ride with Teal'c. You're going home, Sam, aren't you?"

"Yeah," she said, bending to sort out her shoes from among Teal'c and Daniel's, nudging theirs in the right direction as Daniel tossed Jonas his jacket and accepted his own from Teal'c. "All right, I'll see you guys bright and early tomorrow, then. Teal'c, have you--"

"I have completed the weapons testing with Dr. Lee and Sergeant Siler," Teal'c assured her.

"And--"

"I'll finish those MALP reports by tonight," Jonas said. "Daniel, you never returned my paper--d'you get to read it yet? I've never tried submitting anything to the...the _real world_."

"Right, yeah, I think it'll be fine with a couple of quick edits--I'll get it back to you before the meeting tomorrow and then we can send it off to Nyan and have him and Dr. Jordan deal with submission," Daniel said. He patted his pockets. "Does someone have my phone?"

"Oh, here, it must've fallen out," Carter said, picking it up and handing back.

Jack stuck his hands in his pockets and watched them weave around each other as they tied their shoes, tossed keys to each other, finished each other's thoughts, and then simultaneously reached the door, somehow managing smoothly not to get tangled up as they started out of his house. "See you, kids," Jack said, raising a hand.

"'Bye, sir," Carter said, smiling. Jonas waved, and Teal'c gave him a nod, this time accompanied by the smile he had taken to wearing more often these days.

"Thank you, Jack," Daniel said quietly. He gave a half-smile with one corner of his mouth.

"Yeah, get outta here," Jack told them, making a shooing motion with his hands. "All of you get some real sleep--I need you sharp tomorrow."

And he watched them leave from his doorstep, ready to save the world.

**XXXXX  
FIN  
XXXXX**

_Final Notes_: There have been so many versions of so many drafts of this that it's a real relief to be able to say it's finished--there are aspects of this installment that I really like and aspects that I don't like as much, but I hope it all came together satisfactorily. Thank you to those of you who have followed along this far!

With regard to this series...I planned to do a version of "Affinity" in this universe (which turns into a bit of a combination of a few S7-S8 episodes), which focuses on Daniel and Teal'c (and Jonas, to a lesser extent) on Earth, as well as an outside look into the lives of SG-1. There is actually quite a lot of a draft written, but I am having trouble making it come together and have recently been considering restarting from scratch. That, along with the fact that I'd like to write more things in the canon 'verse and not just this AU, means that "AU Affinity" may or may not be written, and even if it is, other ficlets might be finished before that one is.

Once again, thanks very much for reading, and I hope you enjoyed the ride :)


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